We were at the party last night, and had a great time! A much better experience than
MNSSHP, I have to say, and yet if you'd asked me ahead of time, I would have told you MNSSHP would have been my favorite.
We arrived at MK around 4pm and were able to use FP+ for Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, and Dumbo, before the party started. We also rode IASW (DS's favorite!), the carousel, and Mickey's Philharmagic. We got dinner at Pinocchio's Village Haus around 6.30pm, then wandered over towards the castle. We got pretty great seats around 7pm, on the sidewalk in front of the castle next to a garbage can, and we decided to stay there and camp out. DH was dispatched to get hot chocolate and cookies; the hot chocolate was actually very good, but not hot, just lukewarm. The cookies were terrible!
The 7.30pm castle show was delayed by about 10 minutes, but when it did start, for the most part we had a good view. DH was holding DS2 in his arms and he could see just fine, as could I. Well then one person puts a kid on their shoulders, then another does and soon we couldn't see a thing. DH ended up putting DS on his shoulders too, just because he couldn't see anything at that point and he was the only kid NOT on someone's shoulders! I couldn't see anything though! Everybody pretty much stayed put for the castle lighting, which was only a few minutes after the show, and then people began to disperse after that.
We had one hell of a job holding our seats for the parade! DH and I were sat on the curb, and DS was next to us in his stroller. We had people trying to sneak in between us and the stroller, people asking if we could move back so they could sit in front of us, I felt like I was constantly telling people, "nope, we're sat here!" My favorite was the lady who started to pull DS's stroller back from behind; I asked what she was doing, and she said she wanted to make room for her kids to sit in front of his stroller! I had some choice words for her!
But holding the seats was worth it, we had a great view of the parade! My favorite part was how the different floats had different scents; I loved the peppermint scent from Goofy's float! We headed out after the parade because DS was falling asleep, but we really had a great time!