The parade is incredible, totally worth the price and I am not a huge parade fan in general. As another poster said, you can get in as early at 4pm, which we should have done. We didn't go until 7pm and we found it very crowded and very hard to do many things. We also went very close to Halloween, it was the Thursday before. I heard as is gets closer to Halloween, many locals attend and the crowds are greater, but don't know if that is true. I can't say we did much beside see the parade, because candy lines were so long and then kids got super tired by fireworks time. The dressing up and the atmosphere was amazing, totally something to experience!