Touring Advice Needed: Christmas Week 2019

[momcubed892]

Our group needed to change our Disney plans. We will be at Disney during Christmas week. We are staying on property at the Polynesian. My original plans included getting to the parks for the 6-7 am opening, leaving around 10 am or so, spend time at the hotel, and then return to the parks around 5-6 pm for the evening. I planned to use this strategy for those parks that open early and close late. I am concerned that this strategy might not work for some days due to park capacity. We would like to spend Christmas Day at MK and NYE at Epcot. Thoughts? Advice?

 

[Klayfish]

The two specifics that you mention could have phase closures due to capacity. The rest of the parks on the rest of the days will be crowded, but probably won't have phase closures. I've never been one to do the planned mid-day break, to me it just makes no sense. Why spend all that time travelling back and forth? We prefer to just stay until we're done, the mid-day crowd really isn't that big of a deal IMO and then spend the rest of our day relaxing and chilling. Less time wasted "commuting" that way. Even during Xmas week, I don't see any reason to do mid-day breaks.

 

[Disneylover99]

Our group needed to change our Disney plans. We will be at Disney during Christmas week. We are staying on property at the Polynesian. My original plans included getting to the parks for the 6-7 am opening, leaving around 10 am or so, spend time at the hotel, and then return to the parks around 5-6 pm for the evening. I planned to use this strategy for those parks that open early and close late. I am concerned that this strategy might not work for some days due to park capacity. We would like to spend Christmas Day at MK and NYE at Epcot. Thoughts? Advice?

I feel like you might burn your self out doing those super early rope drops each day and all you will see/notice are the crowds. Security lines and lines to get into the park can be unbelievably long early in the day. You might feel exhausted by the time you enter the park. Lol.

Maybe mix it up a bit? If you have a couple of super late nights at the park, plan to sleep in the following day. Entering the parks in the late morning/afternoon/evening sometimes feels like it’s just any other time of year at the parks. Many times, you will be able to avoid security/entrance lines.

Late night touring is my favourite Christmas week. We had much better luck getting 4th fp’s and beyond at the MK early in the evening, but we were unable to get them for the evening earlier in the day. I think people get tired, drop their fp’s and go to another park or back to their resort. And those who are there don’t even bother to try for additional fp’s because they think it’s impossible. Anyways, that’s just my experience and theory.

 

[wmoon]

We did Mk at 6am on Christmas Day then hopped to HS for its opening at 9. It was a lovely way to start the day. Christmas Day was the only day it opened at 6 for emh, the rest of the emh were 7am opening - we did loads on other days leaving early and then doing something different at night.

Try to do Mk at night on the 30th. We only went into Epcot on the 31st late for illuminations.

 

[TwinkleKS]

As others have touched on, you have to take into account the increased wait times for transportation during that time period. The security lines can take forever (they keep trying to improve this, but it can be an issue). The monorail lines will be long ... if you go to DHS or AK, roads can get backed up (the buses don't have a special fast lane). So to me a midday break is a colossal waste of time - like 2-3 hours of time spent waiting to get in and out of parks. Then you have less resting time in the middle of the day.

We go this time every year and tend to go more midday and stay as late as we feel like, with some nights knowing we will be there a lot later than others, so making sure the corresponding morning is late. With that being said, we don't go to the parks on Christmas Day, due to personal preference.

 

[cman]

Having taken four trips that included Christmas week, I'm one that will vote for the midday break.

We've done that at all four times and it worked out perfectly. Yes, you have some early days but if you make an effort to be at the parks 45 minutes early the payback is tremendous. By 10:30-11:00 you're heading out in the opposite direction of the crowds. Transportation is easy because you aren't battling the crowds - all those people are heading toward the parks not leaving them. Then later in the day after a 3 or 4 hour break you're heading back into the parks for evening.

We are DVC members and stayed at BWV for these trips. We could walk to Epcot and HS so that helps. Since you're stating at Polynesian you can walk to MK and use the monorail to Epcot so it should be similar to our situation.

We've been to Disney 10 times so we don't need to do everything on our trips. Because of this we do the midday break and do what we can when in the parks.

Have fun!