Resort Touring during Christmas Season

[fraggle551]

We will be spending 1 day in December touring all of the resort hotels, and hopefully squeezing in some shopping at DTD and the Boardwalk.

I have a breakfast reservation for BOMA at AKL at 9:15. I'm hoping to arrive a little before, and tour the resort. I also have a dinner reservation at Cape May Cafe for 7:05 pm. The plan after that is to head over to the Polynesian and watch the fireworks from the beach.

With all that in mind, does anyone have any tips for visiting the other resorts? I've been looking at the property map, but i'm not sure which way would be easiest, without too much backtracking. We will have a GPS with us.

Thanks so much!

 

[sndral]

After breakfast head over to DTD and be sure to stop at the Christmas store as you wander. If busing just take the AKL bus to DTD.
From DTD take a bus to any of the Epcot resorts and then visit each of the lobbies, you can walk from YC/BC over to BW and then to the Swan/Dolphin (or vice versa, or boat between them - they are clustered very close together) - the chocolate carousel @ BC is not to be missed, I also like BW's display. Then bus over to MK from any of these resorts. Take the boat in front of MK over to WL which has a beautiful tree.
Then take the boat back from WL over to the CR - which isn't the best for Christmas decorations, IMO, but @ the CR you can hop the monorail over to the GF - which is awesome at Christmas and from there walk (or monrail) on over to the Poly for dinner.
Oops just retread your post and noted the Cape May dinner I'd do the mk resorts after dtd then head over to the Epcot resorts for dinner time depending on what time wishes is you might be able to make it back to the poly via mk bus and monorail from bc

 

[laceemouse]

One Christmas we stayed at Wilderness Lodge. I booked one meal at the Poly and after that we rode the monorail and got off to tour the Contemporary and the Grand Floridian. Then another day we ate at Beach Club and afterwards walked to the Yacht Club and all around the lake and saw the decorations at Boardwalk.

So, the only one we haven't seen decorated for Christmas is Animal Kingdom Lodge, and we have a dinner booked there for next month so we will see it!

 

[mountdew1]

Your Cape May Cafe for dinner and then Poly for fireworks kinda makes it difficult to do w/o back tracking.

Not totally sure if you are driving or using Disney transit. Normally I would say go from AKL to DHS, then walk/take boat to Swan/Dolphin, and check out all the Epcot resorts. Then which ever Epcot resort you hit up last, take the bus from there to DTD or MK. From MK I'd walk/monorail to Contemporary, do the loop, and then take the boat from MK to WL. From DTD I'd take the bus to WL, then boat to MK and then do the loop.

Typically I'd say to allow approx 2 hours for each loop (Epcot and MK). That's walking around Epcot, and riding the monorail at MK. Personally I think that the MK loop is better at night, but if you have dinner at 7:05, you won't be done til after 8 at the earliest, and will probably just make it over in time for the fireworks. So you would need to either do MK loop earlier, then Epcot loop, then back to MK for fireworks, or look into changing your ADR.