OK! Here is my experience:
We arrived at the MK around 3. We had a FP+ for the Jingle Cruise. I really enjoyed it, there were a lot of decorations and some new jokes that I didn't hear last year.
A lot of people lined up around 3:30 for wristbands across from POTC. I thought this was kind of a waste of time. No need to line up early everyone. We had a 4 pm FP+ for POTC. We rode and then headed immediately to Sandy Claws.
*Sandy Claws comes out at 5 pm.
We waited until about 5:20 to meet him and were then on our way. We stopped for some food at Cosmic Ray's, then headed to Princess Fairytale Hall. We were second in line at 5:50 pm behind one person (which then grew to 15, which was super annoying and that is all I'll say about that). They started to meet about 10 minutes early and we were out of there around 6:30. It is a really fun meet, Flynn is great as usual. And you get 4 characters for one wait.
Once done, we checked on the other princes line. They meet right outside Princess Fairytale hall next to the castle wall section. One line gets you all 4, which is nice. It was pretty long at this point so we decided to keep moving. Peter Pan and Wendy's first set was already closed, so we continued into Frontierland.
We saw one of the parade reindeers and an elf doing meet and greets. This was the worst part of the party, the CM was telling everyone just to rush up and get pictures, while we had all formed an orderly line. They were making the characters roam, so they'd do pics with a few groups then run away to stand 10 feet away. I hate when Disney does that. I believe they stopped doing this pretty soon though, as I'll get to later.
The country bears were also running around. They will meet outside until early December when the Golden Horseshoe re-opens, then they'll be inside the dance party along with Clarabelle Cow.
We found a spot for the first parade about 40 minutes before hand and were in the front row in Frontierland by the country bears show. We traded off and shopped at the Frontierland shop for party pins.
The parade finally started and we all thought it was excellent! We'd been to a Christmas party a few years ago and weren't impressed by the parade at all, but this time we all loved it.
There is a whole Frozen section with Olaf and skiing/roller skating people that I thought was neat. There is a Wreck it Ralph section and Vanellope finally has her car instead of having to walk!
I loved seeing Cinderella's carriage with the ponies, and the princess/prince explosion float was great! There was Tiana and Naveen, Eric and Ariel, Beast and Belle, Aurora and Phillip, Snow and Charming, Aladdin and Jasmine and the Fairy Godmother. Santa at the end was excellent! I highly recommend the parade.
After that, we waited about 20 minutes to meet Abu and Aladdin in his Prince Ali outfit. After that, we discovered that the elf and reindeer had been moved next to the giant Christmas ornament in Adventureland. The fireworks started to go off, we never really loved the Christmas fireworks, I feel like they are not Disney enough. They have a lot of Christmas songs but are low on Disney specific Christmas, if that makes sense. But they are really nice fireworks, just not for us. We were going to try the Princes' line during the fireworks, but when we got there it had started to sprinkle and they were leaving for a break soon. We knew that the characters meeting in the circus area have rain locations, so we booked it over there. By now it was raining pretty well, but we were right! They had moved Santa Goofy, Christmas dress Minnie and the ducks to the same location under cover. Sandy Claws' line also didn't look too long at this time. So we ended up waiting half an hour and got a mega Christmas pic with all 5 characters, it was pretty neat.
After that we checked on the Princes again, it was about 1040 and their line had closed for the night. We were able to be the third group for Peter Pan and Wendy, so we met them after a `5 minute wait. The second parade had been delayed due to rain and it was just starting around 11 pm.
We wanted to find Mary Poppins, Bert and the penguins at the town square area so we headed over. We saw Merida had no wait so we stopped to see her. We went through the bypass and found one other group waiting for Mary. The CM thought they'd still come out but they had to wait until they were done with the parade first so we just waited. We had a pretty good view of the second parade. We noticed none of the horses were in the parade, most likely due to the wet ground. Also, the princess/prince explosion float was gone and instead all the princesses were in a gazebo.
Mary and co. did end up coming out around 11:40. There is Mary, Bert and 2 penguins. After that it was 11:50 so we ducked into Mickey's meet, he was in a Christmas outfit.
After that we wandered around Main Street watching it snow and just enjoyed the lights. It was a really great party! The only things we missed was the meet with Aurora/Phillip and Snow/Charming. We also missed the Tomorrowland show. We'd seen the castle show before and weren't too impressed so didn't worry about it this year.
Anyone have any questions?
