Earliest Date for Christmas Festivities

[Tom P.]

We just recently got back from a Walt Disney World trip where we experienced the Halloween party for the first time. That experience has inspired us to consider going for the Christmas festivities next year.

We would prefer, however, to go in November rather than December. The pricing seems to be better (except right at Thanksgiving) and it works better with our schedule.

Question: if you were planning a trip for 2016, what would be the earliest date you'd book and feel comfortable that all the Christmas "stuff" (e.g. Christmas decorations, the Christmas party, etc.) would be taking place. I'd hate to book a trip and then ultimately find out that we missed it by a week.

Obviously, I know nothing has been announced for 2016 yet in terms of Christmas, and that Disney may always change things from previous years. But I'm hoping you all can still give me some insight and advice based on what's been seen in the past.

Thanks,
Tom

 

[sharonabe]

We just recently got back from a Walt Disney World trip where we experienced the Halloween party for the first time. That experience has inspired us to consider going for the Christmas festivities next year.

We would prefer, however, to go in November rather than December. The pricing seems to be better (except right at Thanksgiving) and it works better with our schedule.

Question: if you were planning a trip for 2016, what would be the earliest date you'd book and feel comfortable that all the Christmas "stuff" (e.g. Christmas decorations, the Christmas party, etc.) would be taking place. I'd hate to book a trip and then ultimately find out that we missed it by a week.

Obviously, I know nothing has been announced for 2016 yet in terms of Christmas, and that Disney may always change things from previous years. But I'm hoping you all can still give me some insight and advice based on what's been seen in the past.

Thanks,
Tom

The first party will be somewhere around the 7th. Decorations are a little more fluid. Everything will be done by the week of Thanksgiving, so if you want 100%, I'd wait until the week after. If you want to keep it all in November, do the week just prior to Thanksgiving, and you'll get most of it.

 

[CynBeth]

Would you consider going right after Thanksgiving? That way you can experience Holidays Around the World and CP which doesn't start until Black Friday and all of the resort and park decorations will be up. Some might be up the beginning of Nov but not that much. I think the first MVMCP is on 11/8.

 

[karrit2000]

If you want to experience all the Christmas Activities in every park you have to wait to go until after Thanksgiving. Epcot will have some decorations up before but they do not start their Holiday activities until the day after Thanksgiving when they start the Candlelight Processional and the Story Tellers around WS. Epcot is last to be ready due to The Food & Wine Festival going on until mid-November. I don't know what goes on in AK since they stopped having the afternoon parade. The only thing I see for this year is a Mickey & Minnie Photo-op. There used to be many characters in the old Camp Mickey Minnie dressed for the holidays for photo-ops but that's been gone a few years now. Hopefully next year with the Rivers of Light evening show they will have some new Holiday Activities or experiences in AK. Don't know what will be going on in the Studios next year since this year is the final run of Osborne Holiday Lights and major construction begins next year. MK starts the MVMCP usually the first full week of November so the Park will be mostly decorated already for that. They usually don't put the big tree up in MK until after the Christmas parade taping is done, but they moved the taping schedule earlier this year to the second week of November rather than beginning of December so the tree should be up sooner this year.

 

[Tom P.]

The Candlelight Processional at Epcot is not really much on our radar, because we will be with our five young children and they are still too little to sit through the CP. However, pretty much everything else going on around Christmas is of interest to us, and in particular seeing all the decorations at the different parks. So it sounds like aiming for the first week or two after Thanksgiving is really going to be the best balance of not going at the highest price/highest crowd times, but still getting to see everything.

On a related note, are the resorts all typically decorated on the same schedule? If we wanted to go check out some of the resort decorations, would they likely be complete by then as well?

 

[sharonabe]

We went the week directly after Thanksgiving, arrived the Monday after that Thursday, and the resorts were all decorated.