It completely depends on your kids. We have been the last 3 years with DD who is now almost 5. She is a high energy kid, who is a natural night owl, plus we have a one hour time difference from home which makes it feel earlier to her at WDW. At age 2, we wound up having to see the late parade (tried to see the early parade, but that is a whole other story), she stayed awake fine until we started staking out a spot for the parade about an hour ahead of time, then it was hard to keep her awake as we were just sitting. She woke up for the parade and loved it, and was asleep in her stroller before we got out of the front gates after the parade. (We've learned that one of the keys to staying out later is to do the things you have to stake out a spot for, or sit around waiting for, early, and then try to keep more active.) At age 3, we dragged her out of the park at 11:30 p.m., with her whining and complaining that she wasn't ready to leave yet and needed to ride the Barnstormer some more (she had just ridden it 11 times in a row as there was no line so they were just letting her stay on and go in circles, and we said no more- I gave up after 7 times, and DH had absolutely had it at 11). This year at age 4, we actually went to
MVMCP twice (after the first night, we decided we wanted more). I think we left around 11:00 p.m. the first night, but we had been at the park since rope drop. The second night, she got a wonderful invitation from Aladdin to ride the magic carpets with him and Jasmine if she could stay awake until they could take her at 11:30 p.m. She was wide awake waiting, and afterwards was so wound up and excited that I don't think we got her to go to sleep until 1:00 a.m. MVMCP is definitely worth it for our family. If you have kids that naturally fall asleep very early, it might not be worth it for your family.
