As somebody reported in another thread, while the park was packed, most of the rides were walk on. Seemed people were more interested in the shows and characters that night.
We got tickets for a day of our trip, can't go at Christmas and not go to the Christmas party! My kids are little, 5 & 3, and I'm worried they'll be exhausted by the time anything fun is happening.
My boys were 5 & 3 last year when we did it. We just did not go to a park that day. We had a 'resort' day...which meant going to another resort for part of the day and then back to ours for some downtime before entering MK at 4pm. It worked well. My then 3yo was still taking a solid 2-3 hour nap so he would have been a bear had we been at a park earlier in the day.
Most people who go to the parties go for the stage shows, exclusive characters, parade and special version of Wishes, rather than rides they can do during regular park hours.