Thanksgiving 2016...Anyone with me?

[DemoBri1]

TBH if you plan it correctly Thanksgiving won't be all that bad for you. You just have to make sure that you get FPs for those rides you want to do and then as the day progresses you will find other things to do. Our trip last year started off the Friday before Thanksgiving week and we left the day after Thanksgiving. Got in everything we wanted and had dinner at the Yachtsman which would have been wonderful had our server been a little more attentive.

 

[Nhebron]

We are doing this too and have tentatively planned to be at AK on thanksgiving and have dinner at cape may cafe.

 

[Karabear15]

We are doing this too and have tentatively planned to be at AK on thanksgiving and have dinner at cape may cafe.

We are having Thanksgiving dinner at Cape May Cafe too!!

 

[amy1115]

We will have our first Thanksgiving trip this year, and it's our first time to stay onsite. We usually stay at a condo off property, but got free dining at All Star Music. We are so excited to have the total experience finally! We will be there the 19th-25th. Not sure what we'll do on Thanksgiving, but pretty sure it'll be awesome no matter where we end up!

 

[Danman]

We have gone over Thanksgiving week the last 7 trips or so. Luv it. Yes is busy, but we know that going in so no big deal to us. Been here many times so if something has long waits not that big a deal. we just luv being there.. Thanksgiving we are going to one of our favorites - Trails End. We make a point of eating here every trip unless we are doing the Hoop de Doo. Simple food for simple folk

 

[klove]

Us! We've been many times but never at Thanksgiving (or even during the Christmas season.) We are Thur (Thanksgiving) to Thur. No park on Thanksgiving. We wanted dinner at Artist Point, but ended up at Raglan Road. I am most excited for Candlelight Processional with Neil Patrick Harris and the Epcot Storytellers! We're staying at POR (1st time there.)

 

[Kristen Benn]

Is it crowded during Thanksgiving week?

 

[DisneyMommy9]

We will be there!! Friday before Thanksgiving till Saturday after Thanksgiving. No plans for thanksgiving Day yet except dinner at 1900 Park Fare. Will probably make fastpasses for Hollywood Studios though.

 

[imthemamahere]

We've done Thanksgiving trips twice in the last 5 years, and have another in the works for this year.

I will say that if you're planning on staying at a Disney resort over Thanksgiving, some options are fully booked for this year. As are some restaurants, though there are early/late reservations available at many others. You'll want to do some research to come up with your best pick of the remaining choices, I think. The parks are pretty busy over Thanksgiving week. Planning fastpasses and prioritizing your "must-dos" (and either going full-on park-commando or letting go of the rest) is a pretty sound strategy for not letting the crowds get you down.

That said, we love going around Thanksgiving. Totally makes for a stress-free holiday! Have a great trip!

 

[Nhebron]

We've done Thanksgiving trips twice in the last 5 years, and have another in the works for this year.

I will say that if you're planning on staying at a Disney resort over Thanksgiving, some options are fully booked for this year. As are some restaurants, though there are early/late reservations available at many others. You'll want to do some research to come up with your best pick of the remaining choices, I think. The parks are pretty busy over Thanksgiving week. Planning fastpasses and prioritizing your "must-dos" (and either going full-on park-commando or letting go of the rest) is a pretty sound strategy for not letting the crowds get you down.

That said, we love going around Thanksgiving. Totally makes for a stress-free holiday! Have a great trip!

I would agree that a lot of the restaurants are booked at this point. I booked our trip a couple weeks ago and had to do some daily stalking to get decent ADRs.

 

[Mckymousefn]

We always go during Thanksgiving! Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I've never seen a Christmas party the week of Thanksgiving. I believe they stop doing them for that week. At least I think. I remember wanting to attend one in the past couple trips but there were none.

The crowds are a little dense but totally doable. Weather is awesome. We also broke our Thanksgiving tradition. We love our new one!

They've never had a party that week and weve gone 3 different times at Thanksgiving.... including this year

 

[ssmerdel]

We have gone over Thanksgiving week the last 7 trips or so. Luv it. Yes is busy, but we know that going in so no big deal to us. Been here many times so if something has long waits not that big a deal. we just luv being there.. Thanksgiving we are going to one of our favorites - Trails End. We make a point of eating here every trip unless we are doing the Hoop de Doo. Simple food for simple folk

We are eating there on Thanksgiving as well. We also eat here on every tip. Love the simple food. We actually call it our comfort food.

 

[PirateD]

We will be there too for the first time on Thanksgiving. Will arrive on the 19th but will be staying with family for the first part of the week and then all of us are staying on property for a couple of nights at the end of the week. We will probably commute to the parks a couple of times at the beginning of the week to get a couple of extra days in.

I'm still trying to develop a touring plan since this was more of a last minute trip. We will eat mostly QS, but I did get a couple of ADRs including BOG dinner for Thanksgiving Day--thanks to the cancelled ADR thread. It ended up due to scheduling conflicts that we have to check in on Thanksgiving Day so we will be arriving to the MK later than I hoped. Do we need to be worried about park closings on that day? We are veterans of Christmas week so we are used to touring with crowds, but since we haven't been this week I wasn't sure if we need to worry about getting into the MK. We are considering starting at AK and then park hopping over to MK for dinner.

I'm so excited to get this extra trip this year! I originally thought that I wouldn't be back until 2017.

 

[::danielle::]

We are coming in on Monday 21st after getting off the Dream and staying until Friday. Staying at our home resort GF. This is our first time at the parks on a holiday. Everything I have read say the parks don't get "bad" until Thanksgiving day. That being said, we want to do Universal at least one day for the Harry Potter. Is Epcot normally bad on Thanksgiving day? Do we stand a chance of eating anywhere without a reservation?

We are also coming off the dream, visiting WDW and Universal (Harry Potter)! Except we are leaving early Thursday morning to avoid the dreaded guilt trip if we miss Thanksgiving with family.

 

[mco65]

Been a while ago but the best Thanksgiving we ever had was the one we spent at WDW!!!! enjoy!

 

[MrsDuck]

This will be year 2 of Thanksgiving at Disney.

We go knowing the parks are going to be nuts; we plan very little park time (we live about 2.5 hours away and are able to visit frequently - for some, this may not be an option) and enjoy the non-park recreation activities.

Last year we ate at Garden Grove but this year we're having dinner at Boma!

 

[laughinplace199]

Add us to the list! We know it will be crowded but we don't care! We're going to Universal on the day before Thanksgiving and then we'll do WDW from Thanksgiving through Nov 28. We plan to go to Epcot or AK on Thanksgiving day and we're having dinner at Boma that night. Also doing MVMCP on the 27th.

 

[SRUAlmn]

How many places will serve a traditional turkey dinner on thanksgiving. We have been contemplating a Thanksgiving trip for years and always wondered where we would eat. Any suggestions?

We've been to WDW over Thanksgiving twice and are headed back this year! The first Thanksgiving trip we took we made Thanksgiving reservations at Coral Reef for 6:00 (it was the only place that had availability.) We got there at 5:30, waited until 6:45 and were finally seated. We were given a normal menu and our hostess quickly walked away. We waited 15 minutes for our server who then took our drink orders and walked away before we could ask about holiday menus. By the time she came back to take our order so we could ask she said they were sold out of all the holiday food and then proceeded to tell us how delicious it all was We were incredibly irritated and have chosen to skip trying to have a Thanksgiving meal at WDW. I'm sure this wasn't the norm, but it really turned us off from the experience. Having to have turkey on thanksgiving really isn't a big deal to us, though.

 

[SRUAlmn]

Is it crowded during Thanksgiving week?

It depends on when you're used to going. I'm a teacher so we have almost exclusively gone in the summer. The last two years we've gone over Thanksgiving and I'd say it was fairly comparable to summer crowd-wise, but I wasn't dying of heat stroke and could actually enjoy myself (although last year was pretty warm,) so I will take that over summer any day!

 

[NJ Cruisers]

QUESTION to others going Thanksgiving week: I don't see EMM on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week for MK. It is there for all the other Tuesdays in November. Does anyone know if they will add it later? I don't want it - wouldn't spend that much money to go on 3 rides for an hour. But I will also skip MK that day if they might have it. Also - could they add it another day?

We went Thanksgiving week 2 years ago and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. We did rope drop and with FP we did everything we wanted. BUT - we don't do the roller coasters so that helps us a lot. Our favorite activity is to wander around the world and people watch.