First post advice on Florida at Xmas/New Year

sal1309

Earning My Ears
Joined
Jan 16, 2013
Hi All

My first post on the DIS hope you all had a lovely xmas.

We are considering going over xmas and new year next year. We have survived an Easter and normally go October as our favourite time of the year.

Can anyone tell me how mad it is over xmas is it worth doing and is the weather normally ok?

Our thoughts is maybe to do DC on xmas day and a water park new years day,

We are going the week before so hopefully this will be a little quieter and having been lucky enough to have been a few times happy to pop to and from the parks and not do full days ect.

Any advice or experience of this time of year much appreciated.
 
First off, welcome to the boards! I’ve been once several years ago, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but my experience between Christmas and New Years was it was madness. I would never do it again. The lines for everything were so long I did not enjoy being in the park, and I spent most of the time stressed out. That being said, I usually go during the slowest times of the year (January not Marathon, October, September, etc) so my frame of reference and yours will be completely different as you usually go for Easter, which I’ve never attempted. If you’re willing to park hop and are used to bigger crowds than I am I’d say you’ll be okay. WDW prep school has a crowd calendar that I’ve found to be relatively accurate, they put December 13-16 as busy and everything from the 17-31 as their highest level, so the week before might not give you as big as an advantage with the crowd level as you would suspect.

Weather is a real crap shoot in Florida any time of year. I’ve been in January multiple times and I’ve had trips where I’ve needed to wear fall level clothes (I’m from Oregon so my idea of what needs winter clothes is different from a lot of other people) and other trips I’ve lived in the pool in the afternoon it’s so hot. I would say make sure to have a water park back up,

At the end of the day though, any trip to WDW is better than no trip so if that’s the only time you can do it I would say go for it, and just realize there’s a chance you might spend more time at your resort than you normally do.
 
I’ve been 3 times but this year was surprisingly different. The wait times were just as long for stand-by but FP times were still around 10 minutes like normal instead of 30 or longer and using backstage areas for queues. The crowd flow was tolerable too unlike years past. The long FP lines were mostly just people coming an hour early and CMs turning them away because the rule is 5 minutes early and so many just wont listen and think they should be the exception.

Ride wait times were manageable the first and last few hours of the day and combined with FP made the day ok. The Christmas parade and Minnie’s fireworks plus ride overlays and castle shows helped offset the extra hotel costs and were a good way to pass the time when ride lines were long.

Disney announced on speakers and sent push notifications to stay in the park and do rides after the midnight fireworks on NYE and I was able to do IASW, HM, BTM, and PotC before 1AM, wander over to the castle, and only have one or two groups in line for Photopass with the castle lit up with 2020s. Resort busses were walk-on although TTC bus line was still insane. BTM wasn’t even able to send out full trains and people could easily ride as fast as it took to sprint through the queue.

If you are willing to schedule you day around the long wait times, it is a great time to go, the higher costs result is a different type of guest (less pushy, more polite..to me as a disabled person). Even NYE at the MK was fine despite the crowds and the fireworks were worth the hour wait.
 
We've never been the week between Christmas and New Years, but I've heard it's crazy crowded so I personally wouldn't choose to go then, but I think your game plan of not doing a full day might make it bearable though. We have been twice during the Christmas season (once mid November and once mid December) and the weather was fabulous both times (no rain and 70s-80s...a little cool some evenings but kids were still able to swim comfortably) and the crowds were tolerable. Christmas at Disney is really beautiful though!
 



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