Thanksgiving Week

[Delirium]

We are going over Thanksgiving week as well. We know it will be busy, but are very excited to experience the festive atmosphere. We have an ADR at Liberty Tree on Thanksgiving evening.

One thing I'm watching closely is the park hours. Basing a lot of planning on historical hours versus what is published now. We love late night touring, so if they fail to extend hours to something comparable in the past, a lot of our plans will be severely impacted.

 

[michygoomy]

I would not recommend Trail’s End. The one time we went for Thanksgiving dinner we were taken much later than our ADR. It was so crowded everyone was on top of each other and they kept running out of things and were not being replaced very quickly. Not sure if there would be an opening at this point but we have done Boma for our last few trips and we had a great experience at Thanksgiving dinner there.

Glad to hear that as we scheduled Boma for dinner on Thanksgiving!

 

[michygoomy]

I was surprised to see such early closings at most of the parks. We do like early morning and evening touring, but can adjust as necessary. When we did the week after NYE we ran into similar issues.

 

[sharadoc]

Many tip sites will tell you to never go to Disney whenever kids have off from school, but those are the only times I can go! Being a teacher, I am tied to taking vacations at those busy times and have experienced many of them: Thanksgiving, spring break, MLK Weekend, July 4, summers, etc.

Although it's been a few years since I went to Disney on Thanksgiving (the first being my honeymoon!), I found it totally doable and enjoyable. The weather was beautiful, the decorations were delightful, and the crowds were manageable with a good plan. Compared to the summer and spring break, I did not notice a big difference in the crowd levels and MLK weekend seemed even busier to me!

That being said, I did not attempt to go to MK on Thanksgiving day and spent the day at other parks instead. I have eaten Thanksgiving dinner at 1900 Park Fare, Chef Mickey's, and Whispering Canyon Cafe, so even those experiences were outside the parks. My dream meal for Thanksgiving would be Liberty Tree Tavern of course, but I don't think that will ever happen!

We are actually considering a trip over Thanksgiving this year - just started mulling it over. Knowing that our planning is WAY BEHIND, does anyone have suggestions for a good meal for Thanksgiving and it might still be possible to snag an ADR this late?

OP, good luck with your decision!

We went in 2016 on Free Dining, which was a TON of food. We did brunch at the old Captain's Grille that morning, and they had turkey and ham. Then we did a really late BOMA for dinner. That was fantastic! They had all the regular stuff, then they added a carving station (on wheels) with turkey and all the trimmings. We were literally the last table in the restaurant and our server came to us and asked if we were done or should they keep filling it up? We were stuffed, we let them start cleaning up. One of the best Thanksgiving meals at Disney World every!

We've done Trail's End a few times. It's good, but they get rid of some of the regular stuff on the buffet and add in the turkey. Really busy, too and usually the parking lot fills up. Last time we did Thanksgiving there, they made us park at Wilderness Lodge and take a bus over.

 

[disneygolfer1985]

We have been about 3 times over Thanksgiving and the rest have been over Christmas. I would always select Thanksgiving week over Christmas every time. The parks are most crowded Thursday through Saturday. Typically, we avoided MK on Thanksgiving Day and Epcot on Black Friday, but since they started the International Festival of the Holidays before Thanksgiving, Black Friday at Epcot shouldn't be as bad as it has been in the past. Crowds will start to lighten on Saturday and be pretty nice come Sunday and Monday after. Typically, we would go Tuesday through Tuesday and have no real issues with the last few days being pretty easy touring.