"Official" 2025 Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

[ruthies12]

I am in a MVMCP group on FB. Almost every person is reporting back that the parties feel more crowded than they have ever been. Many are also reporting that they went to the park on a non-party day and they were able to get more done, some multiple times before the sun went down.

Yeah I feel like it used to be a good value and a great way to add a little disney in to a non-disney trip, which is what we were doing on this trip. But with the increased prices and the crowds, the parties no longer have that allure for me I think.

 

[Sydnerella]

Thought I'd post about my experience using fastpasses cause I know I was looking for this info before my trip. I went Friday 11/14. I was staying off site so had to buy 3 days before. I logged in right at 7 am on Tuesday and 7D and tron were already gone. I was able to do multiLL and got haunted mansion for 3:05 to 4:05, winnie the pooh for 3:45 to 4:45, and jingle cruise for 4:40 to 5:40. I only had the party tickets in my account and no other tickets. I was happy to get jingle cruise cause that line stayed pretty solid all night.

_____________

I have done the xmas party a few times in years past and I felt like this party was more crowded and the waits were higher than in the past. We still got to do what we wanted with smart planning and being willing to walk fast, but we weren't doing the party specific stuff like parades or characters and we were just 2 adults. The walkways were insanely crowded and we purposely stayed out of the hub entirely.

You were able to book LLMP’s without a park ticket? Just a party ticket? Do you have APs? I was under the impression that we could not get LLMP‘s for the period before the party unless we had a day ticket for that day? We have two day tickets for which we want LLMP‘s and LLSP’s, but we are using them two days after the Christmas party.

We also very focused on getting things done when it comes to rides rather than party activities. We got the tickets because we thought it would be just as affordable as a park ticket with lightning lanes and we would benefit from lower crowds and ride people during the party?!?!

We are a family of four with two college kids and my husband and I going for four nights December 19-23, with the focus of rides and festive atmosphere during the Christmas party and Jolly nights. Followed by an Epcot day and a park hopper day for our last day to hit anything we might have wanted to see again or that we missed.

If you are willing to share your touring strategy for the pre-party/party and any other points of your trip, we would love and appreciate it! The last time we were there as a family was 2021 and while we have been nine times and two times as parents only since 2021, things keep changing and it sounds like it’s more crowded than we were hoping for!?!

Thank you!!

 

[AussieFan8]

You were able to book LLMP’s without a park ticket? Just a party ticket? Do you have APs? I was under the impression that we could not get LLMP‘s for the period before the party unless we had a day ticket for that day? We have two day tickets for which we want LLMP‘s and LLSP’s, but we are using them two days after the Christmas party.

We also very focused on getting things done when it comes to rides rather than party activities. We got the tickets because we thought it would be just as affordable as a park ticket with lightning lanes and we would benefit from lower crowds and ride people during the party?!?!

A couple suggestions:

• If you want to try to get LLMP/LLSP for the party day, make sure you book your two day ticket days first, then try to book for the party last. I forgot to do that this year, and was unable to book LLMP for our last regular ticket day. I am assuming the system counted MVMCP as one of our eligible park days.
• Try to do the rides with the longest waits (ie Tron, Jingle Cruise, 7DMT, Peter Pan) during fireworks, parades, and at the very end of the night.

 

[Sydnerella]

A couple suggestions:

• If you want to try to get LLMP/LLSP for the party day, make sure you book your two day ticket days first, then try to book for the party last. I forgot to do that this year, and was unable to book LLMP for our last regular ticket day. I am assuming the system counted MVMCP as one of our eligible park days.
• Try to do the rides with the longest waits (ie Tron, Jingle Cruise, 7DMT, Peter Pan) during fireworks, parades, and at the very end of the night.

Thank you! What were the waits like for other, nonheadliner rides, before and during the party?

 

[HyperspaceMountainPilot]

Thought I'd post about my experience using fastpasses cause I know I was looking for this info before my trip. I went Friday 11/14. I was staying off site so had to buy 3 days before. I logged in right at 7 am on Tuesday and 7D and tron were already gone. I was able to do multiLL and got haunted mansion for 3:05 to 4:05, winnie the pooh for 3:45 to 4:45, and jingle cruise for 4:40 to 5:40. I only had the party tickets in my account and no other tickets. I was happy to get jingle cruise cause that line stayed pretty solid all night.

due to an uber mishap we ended up not arriving in the park until 5 pm. we went straight to winnie the pooh and our band still scanned green no problem. We then decided to ask the workers at haunted mansion if we could use that one since it was over an hour late but our bands still scanned green at that one and we were let on without difficulty. We then did jingle cruise only 5 minutes late. So we used all 3 FP between 5 and 6. We were walking very quickly between the 3 rides though.

Our priority was rides, especially Tron cause I had never ridden it. The wait was high all evening so we decided to watch the fireworks from the tomorrowland bridge and left the bridge just before the fireworks ended. We were walking towards tron while the finale was going off and we got there to a posted 15 minute wait which I think actually only took 5 min. Just an FYI you really can't hear the music at all from the bridge (the one closest to the castle that you lets out by teacups). We had a good view of the fireworks themselves and could see some of the projections on the side of the castle.

Overall we were able to ride everything we wanted and still collect cookies but we did a lot of crisscrossing because waits at the main rides did not go down until the very end of the night and those are of course spread out with peter pan, 7D, tron, etc. We did get to collect a lot of cookies to eat, I encountered 1 worker who said it was 1 per person but everyone else happily gave us 2 at a time. The longest line was for the snowman pretzels but it still moved pretty fast and only took 10 minutes.

I have done the xmas party a few times in years past and I felt like this party was more crowded and the waits were higher than in the past. We still got to do what we wanted with smart planning and being willing to walk fast, but we weren't doing the party specific stuff like parades or characters and we were just 2 adults. The walkways were insanely crowded and we purposely stayed out of the hub entirely.

Thanks for the report— hugely disappointing that the park might be even more crowded than usual but better for us to set expectations going in. I was hoping to by Tron LLSP 7 days out and it was totally sold out the night before our booking window, so we are probably going to need to copy your “end of fireworks dash” strategy, as two members of our party are genuinely not physically capable of standing in that queue for an hour plus.

Jingle Cruise staying long all night is also a shock…trying to decide if we go for LLMP tickets now.

 

[AussieFan8]

Thank you! What were the waits like for other, nonheadliner rides, before and during the party?

I can report back; we are going on Wednesday! But last year, I didn't think the waits were bad at all. We watched the fireworks from the Tomorrowland bridge and went straight to Tron as they were ending. I believe we waited about 20-25 minutes. 7DMT always seems to be about 30 during the party. Jingle Cruise will be shorter if you time it right, but was about 25-30 minutes last year when we did it. But most of the others in our experience have been 5-15 minutes or so. I hope the waits have not gone up significantly! Like you, low waits are the main reason we do the party.

I will miss Big Thunder this year. We often do that one three or four times in a row.

 

[Sydnerella]

I can report back; we are going on Wednesday! But last year, I didn't think the waits were bad at all. We watched the fireworks from the Tomorrowland bridge and went straight to Tron as they were ending. I believe we waited about 20-25 minutes. 7DMT always seems to be about 30 during the party. Jingle Cruise will be shorter if you time it right, but was about 25-30 minutes last year when we did it. But most of the others in our experience have been 5-15 minutes or so. I hope the waits have not gone up significantly! Like you, low waits are the main reason we do the party.

I will miss Big Thunder this year. We often do that one three or four times in a row.

Thank you! That will be awesome and Wednesday will be a great comparison date!!! We are also super bummed about BTMRR being under refurb. Its DD19s all time favorite and she even got a trip last spring with her college dance dept and it was closed then too. 4x in a row would be a dream - we did that once when they were 9 and 11. We also rode it 3x B2B2B at Disneyland Paris in 2024 - definitely a core memory

Have a MAGICAL time!

 

[AussieFan8]

Have a MAGICAL time!

Thank you!

 

[ruthies12]

You were able to book LLMP’s without a park ticket? Just a party ticket? Do you have APs? I was under the impression that we could not get LLMP‘s for the period before the party unless we had a day ticket for that day? We have two day tickets for which we want LLMP‘s and LLSP’s, but we are using them two days after the Christmas party.

We also very focused on getting things done when it comes to rides rather than party activities. We got the tickets because we thought it would be just as affordable as a park ticket with lightning lanes and we would benefit from lower crowds and ride people during the party?!?!

We are a family of four with two college kids and my husband and I going for four nights December 19-23, with the focus of rides and festive atmosphere during the Christmas party and Jolly nights. Followed by an Epcot day and a park hopper day for our last day to hit anything we might have wanted to see again or that we missed.

If you are willing to share your touring strategy for the pre-party/party and any other points of your trip, we would love and appreciate it! The last time we were there as a family was 2021 and while we have been nine times and two times as parents only since 2021, things keep changing and it sounds like it’s more crowded than we were hoping for!?!

Thank you!!

Yes I was able to book lightening lanes with just a party ticket. I have literally no other tickets in my disney app or elsewhere. I do not have AP's. I do have a reservation for the ft wilderness campground next summer but it is a campsite only reservation with no tickets attached to it.

So I had my ticket and my sister's ticket in my account, I had bought the tickets from AAA and then linked them. Before the 11/14 was available to click on in the lightening lane section on the app I could try to click on a different date and it would go to the list of people in my account and say nobody is eligible to purchase. At the 3 week mark when the 11/14 date showed up as clickable, I could click on lightening lane and then it showed up as "this person will be eligible to purchase lightening lanes on Tuesday November 11th" and said that both under my name and my sister's name but nobody else in my family since we were the only 2 going to the party and therefore were the only two with tickets.

so once you are within 3 weeks try to click on the lightening lanes and see if it shows an eligible date under your names. That was how I knew I would be able to book. Then sure enough at 7 am on the 11th I was able to! I was very excited!

If you are four grown able-bodied adults you should be able to do all the rides. Book a few lightning lanes for between 4 and 6, be at the front gate by 330 for entry. There will be several non-headliners with short waits that can you do in those first hours. You just have to be willing to circle the park a few times if you want to keep your waits short.

We did HM, WTP, and Jingle cruise with lightening line 5 to 6. Then from 6 to 9 we did laugh floor, dumbo, little mermaid, small world, tianas, peter pan and pirates, (not in that order but thats what all we did) plus got lots of cookies. At 9 we got in line for mine train with a 30 minute wait. After that we got more hot cocoa in tomorrowland and then watched the fireworks from the bridge. Then we left those early and got to tron with only a 15 minute wait. Then we decided to go over to adventureland to get the cookies there cause when were in adventureland earlier in the evening it wasn't time for cookies yet. That was a terrible mistake unfortunately because we then got trapped by the dang parade. We had wanted to ride haunted mansion again but we couldn't get to it with the street being blocked off so we ended up riding pirates again, it had 0 wait, and then we wasted time walking around the xmas shop in liberty square waiting for the road to open back up. When we were finally let out of that area after the parade passed it was 1130 and we really wanted to do space mountain so we headed back over to tomorrowland and rode that with no wait and that was our last ride, we got off at 11:50 and decided we were done and wanted to finally see main street which we had avoided like the plague all during the party.

We did a good bit of unnecessary walking LOL, you can probably do better/do more if you are a little smarter with your plan than we were. Definitely try to time adventureland around the parades, I still can't believe I made such a rookie mistake and I know better. Also be prepared for bad traffic and time your arrival better than I did from wherever you are coming from, that was my other rookie mistake that I knew better than to do and was kicking myself for. It was only a 20 minute drive from the hotel we were at but took an hour with traffic.

 

[ruthies12]

I will add that walking to tron during the finale of the fireworks was the smartest move we made. We got on in under 10 minutes and as we walked off the line was much longer with a lot of people heading that way. I think it went back up to a half hour right after the fireworks and then went back down again in the last hour but I'm not going to swear to that, my memory may be fuzzy. Everything had a super short wait the last hour from 11 to 12 but of course you can't ride everything in one hour so you gotta pick your priorities!

 

[ruthies12]

I also want to add to keep in mind that at 6 pm the day people have to start leaving and also there are no more fastpasses which really makes a huge difference in how quickly the lines move. The line for mine train when we got in it at 9 pm was posted at 30 minutes and the line was all the way out of the que and wrapped around that front fence. I thought it was going to take longer but it did only take 30 minutes. It moves really fast with no fastpassers so even though it looked super long it wasn't that bad.