We have reservations for this same week next year. Which night did you go to
MVMCP? Were the crowds okay? Which parks did you do on which days. Any problems with your ADRs? Lines for characters? Highlights/Lowlights? I love WDW but I hate big crowds. Obviously the two go together so I have to compromise...but visiting WDW at Christmastime and not having to deal with big crowds would be ideal.
We went to MVMCP on Thursday, Dec. 3rd. Crowds were moderate, but there really weren't any lines to speak of for the rides. We saw the 2nd parade and it definitely wasn't as crowded as the first one.
We arrived on the 1st and just stayed at the resort as we got in kinda late. On the 2nd we went to MK, the 3rd AK, the 4th DHS and the 5th Epcot. I used the crowd calender at
www.touringplans.com to pick my days. We arrived at each park either at rope drop or shortly thereafter and did all the more popular rides first and got fastpasses for things like Soarin', Toy Story Mania, Test Track.
I made my ADR's at the 90 day mark (now you can do them at 180 days) and got 1900 Park Fare for dinner at 4:55 pm, Chef Mickey's for dinner at 5:15 pm, 1900 Park Fare for breakfast at 8:00 am, O'Hana for breakfast at 7:30 am and Le Cellier for late lunch at 2:25 pm. The only restaurant we weren't seated at right away was Le Cellier and we were seated about 15 min after our reservation time.
The character lines really didn't look bad at all. We had no line for Pooh, Eyeore, Tigger, Rafiki, Miko and Brer Rabbit at AK. Since we saw Mickey (twice), Minnie, Donald, Pluto (twice), Goofy, Lilo, Stich, Alice, Mary Poppins, Mad Hatter, Pooh, Tigger, Cinderella, Prince Charming, Druscilla, Anastasia and Lady Tremaine at our meals there was no need for us to stand in line for any of them. My niece (11) was really more interested in the rides than the characters so we didn't wait in line for anyone. Also, I was taking a picture of my niece in front of the Sorcerer's Hat in DHS when all the kids from High School Musical came running up and jumped into the picture with her.
The only real lowlight we had was the rain on Friday, but we made the best of it. With getting to the parks early, using the crowd calendar and a good touring plan we were able to see/do pretty much everything with little to no wait times. The only things we skipped were:
MK - Toon Town and Space Mountain. We were in line for Space Mountain and it broke down and didn't come back up.
AK - Kali River Rapids (none of us wanted to get wet and we've ridden it before) and the Conservation Station.
DHS - High School Musical and Lights, Motors, Action were both cancelled due to the weather. We decided to skip Fantasmic (again, we've seen it before) as we didn't feel like sitting in the rain to see it again.
Epcot - We whipped through the World Showcase pretty fast. My niece just really wanted to complete her passport there. We did the rides in Mexico and Norway and my mom saw the movies in France, Canada and China while we ran around and got the passport completed. We did stand outside of the Candlelight Processional for a bit to hear the choir and saw the storytellers in Norway and Germany.
In Futureworld we skipped Journey Into Imagination, Mission Space, and Innovations.