It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

[lark]

I call BS.

Disney is famous for an almost overnight transformation from no holliday decorations to full christmas during the week of thanksgiving.

Sorry, that's incorrect. Or, put more colorfully, I call BS on you. (Said with kindness.)

You're simply misinformed. Massive decorations are up well before Thanksgiving. They start around November 2, and pick up to a fever pitch in the 10 days before Thanksgiving. The large trees in many resorts will be up at several days before Thanksgiving (have seen them myself at the GF and the WL). As for it being an "overnight" operation, that's most definitely not true. I stayed once in the main building at the GF from November 14 to the 19th, and the massive decorating production took place the entirety of our 5-day stay, with the tree being unveiled the morning we checked out, which was a week before Thanksgiving.

 

[Simba's Mom]

The lights are up, but they're not on.

I, for one, am not happy about the decorations and music being out already. I really enjoy the normal music in the parks, and it's disconcerting to me to hear Christmas music instead, especially before Thanksgiving!

But the weather is beautiful and I'm loving being in the World anyway!

At least someone here agrees with DH. He wanted to go to WDW for THANKSGIVING, and since I know he's a self-described Christmas scrooge, now I'm really concerned about all this. I look forward to all the Christmas decorations, but doesn't anyone celebrate Thanksgiving anymore? It's somewhat sad to me that except for the Thanksgiving meals at some resorts, Disney does nothing else to celebrate the holiday, at least not that I know of. Has anyone seen any THANSGIVING decorations?

 

[shellybaxter]

Sorry, that's incorrect. Or, put more colorfully, I call BS on you. (Said with kindness.)

You're simply misinformed. Massive decorations are up well before Thanksgiving. They start around November 2, and pick up to a fever pitch in the 10 days before Thanksgiving. The large trees in many resorts will be up at several days before Thanksgiving (have seen them myself at the GF and the WL). As for it being an "overnight" operation, that's most definitely not true. I stayed once in the main building at the GF from November 14 to the 19th, and the massive decorating production took place the entirety of our 5-day stay, with the tree being unveiled the morning we checked out, which was a week before Thanksgiving.

I don't want to BS anyone's BS - While I agree with you that lots of decorations are up before Thanksgiving, Got Quattro is right. I've heard the stories of how wonderful the transformation is on the day after Thanksgiving. This year the CM when I made my ressies for early December even commented on how it was too bad that I wasn't coming in earlier so I could enjoy the big tranformation. I wonder if they have just started earlier and earlier each year, making the tranformation less noticable?

 

[Got Quattro?]

Sorry, that's incorrect. Or, put more colorfully, I call BS on you. (Said with kindness.)

You're simply misinformed. .

Sorry, but I am not missinformed on anything disney. They did not use to put things up this soon.

last year I was there nov 7-12 and christmas was not "installed" yet.

They have changed it this year.

 

[disney1990]

Sorry, but I am not missinformed on anything disney. They did not use to put things up this soon.

last year I was there nov 7-12 and christmas was not "installed" yet.

They have changed it this year.

We were at the Food and Wine Festival last year the 2nd week of November. The Christmas trees at the All Star Resorts were up and lit.

 

[JerseyJ]

I've experienced the overnight transition & agree that it was the ultimate in Magical.
In 1982, we arrived @ Fort Wilderness the Sunday after Thanksgiving. During the week, my 3yo & 7yo DD, DH to be & I left Magic Kingdom one night after seeing the parade & were thoroughly in love with Disney.

We had no idea of the Disney Magic that we were to experience the next morning. Took the boat over for park opening in the morning & found everything decorated for Christmas overnight. I still get chills thinking how wonderful that experience was.

 

[CTXRover]

I've experienced the overnight transition & agree that it was the ultimate in Magical.
In 1982, we arrived @ Fort Wilderness the Sunday after Thanksgiving. During the week, my 3yo & 7yo DD, DH to be & I left Magic Kingdom one night after seeing the parade & were thoroughly in love with Disney.

We had no idea of the Disney Magic that we were to experience the next morning. Took the boat over for park opening in the morning & found everything decorated for Christmas overnight. I still get chills thinking how wonderful that experience was.

That was quite magical. When WDW was just one park and two resort hotels and a campground, the holiday transformation did occur over the week of Thanksgiving and seeemed to happen literally overnight. It is absolutely impossible though to expect Disney, or anyone else for that matter, to hang 17 miles of garland, hang 3500 wreaths, install more than 1500 trees of varying sizes and other decorations loaded into and delivered by over 150 semi-trailer truckloads in one night across the WDW resort's 4 parks, Blizzard Beach, DTD, 22+ hotels, and the 2 Disney cruise ships, the cruise ship terminal and the Vero Beach resort. With more decorations planned for certain areas of the parks this year than in the past, it has become necessary to start installing the decorations sooner and sooner to meet the deadline of all decorations being up by Thanksgiving weekend.

It is still relatively true that most of the big decorations for a single park or hotel to go up in one night. Disney has been installing their decorations well before Thanksgiving for quite some time as the resort has expanded to a point that it was a necessity.

Plus, there has been a massive shift in society and mass-retailers who I've seen start decorating even before Halloween has passed. So it has become accepted by the masses to see Christmas decorations up by early November nowadays.

 

[JerseyJ]

Since we will be going in early January, does anyone know how long the decorations will stay up. Sure hoping we get to see some of the Christmas Magic still.

 

[saucymb]

I worked at the Disney-MGM Studios in 1997, and Christmas decorations definitely began showing up in early-to-mid November. In fact, they were doing trial runs during the day of the Beauty and the Beast Enchanted Christmas Parade before Thanksgiving. And the rest of the parks and resorts were showing Christmas decorations early as well.

So it's been going on since at least 1997.

The idea of an "overnight transformation" is nice, though not something that has happened in recent years. Although I'm sure that in the hours after Thanksgiving, more decorations are displayed, lights are turned on, and general Christmas cheer is more abundant than before Thanksgiving.

Either way, can't we just enjoy it?

 

[CTXRover]

Since we will be going in early January, does anyone know how long the decorations will stay up. Sure hoping we get to see some of the Christmas Magic still.

Many of the decorations will come down within the first 2 weeks of January, usually starting a few days after the New Year. If you go the first week of January you will probably see most of the decorations. During the second week you will notice most of the decorations starting to disappear across the entire resort one day at a time. I'm honestly not sure when the last piece of decorations are finally taken down, but by mid-January the resort should be decoration-free. Hopefully that helps some.

 

[shellybaxter]

We went January 5th - 17th last year. Most of the resort decorations were still up, but the park decorations were either already down, or coming down. The resort decorations seemed to be gone by Dec 10th

 

[peter11435]

last year I was there nov 7-12 and christmas was not "installed" yet.

Not where you were, but I assure you that Christmas was installed in some locations. Most years the parks don't begin decorating till mid November while the resorts begin early Novermber. This year they have started the parks before the resorts.