2024.11 Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas
During the Christmas season Disney offers special holiday-themed events in the evening. It does cost extra of course, but I think it was well worth the experience for few reasons.
Christmas Events
In 2024 Disney offered “Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas” at Magic Kingdom, and on alternating evenings another themed event was at Hollywood Studios. We selected Magic Kingdom largely because, it’s Magic Kingdom — the original theme park to Walt Disney World. Also with the prospect of having shorter waits for rides, this park had rides that we’d both enjoy. This was our first visit by car and after parking your car, a shuttle delivered us to the terminal to take a ferry across the water to the main entrance.
Although we could arrive as early as 4pm, we weren’t in a rush. We were at the main entrance of the park by 5:30pm. For attendees of the Very Mickey Christmas event, upon entering staff had us travel around the back of Main street. During the detour we got a wristband, map, and, a keepsake ornament. The detour was necessary to ensure park guests who were leaving wouldn’t be met with a new wave of park entrants.
We headed towards Frontierland, and along the way we stopped for “It’s a small world”. There was little, if any, wait. After the ride, the daylight had completely faded and headed to Haunted House. During the walk, staff were checking for wristbands. Without one, guests were directed back towards Main Street and the exit. For us, we were able to continue to Haunted House and begin enjoying shorter lines.
At Haunted House we noticed the most obvious upside of the evening — no fast pass or special lines. Just one line for all riders. This did help the lines move at a constant pace. We probably waited in line less than 30 minutes for each ride, a thorough improvement from our last visit several years ago.
After Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, we headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean. Here the line was maybe 20 minutes, and decorations for Christmas were easy to spot.
Parade
The Christmas themed parade occurs twice per evening. We attended the earlier parade and it was filled with what felt like most, if not every Disney character. Again, crowds were present, but it was easy for us to find a spot to watch the parade. In total it might have taken between 20-30 minutes for all the floats to past. From the pictures in the slideshow below you’ll understand my earlier statement. Non-stop characters in the parade:
Food
There are some specific food is available during the evening. Before trying any of these items, it’s notable that a benefit of the evening is that there are free beverages (hot chocolate, and cider) at several stations throughout the park. As well, cookies were available. Varieties included chocolate chip, gingerbread, sugar, and I think brownie as well. Being Disney, lines moved quickly, and as the evening continued the line decreased as more park goers reached their sugar intake limit. If you’re a night owl with a sweet tooth, it would have been very easy to keep a sugar high going throughout the event.
Here’s a picture of a concession stand behind the castle.
Fireworks
Disney knows how to do fireworks. The location we chose was closer to the start of the Tomorrowland. An unexpected benefit was that the zipline for Tinkerbell went may 20-30 ft above us as the fireworks started. A definite bonus. The fireworks were outstanding as usual. No video, but a few pictures to set the stage:
There were more rides we took both before and after the fireworks. One special treat for me was Space Mountain. Little Miss didn’t join me, and so being a single rider enabled me to quickly get a seat once the line had us in the main area to hop on the roller coaster. Instantly once the ride started I was reminded that this ride is not the smoothest roller coaster.
After a few more rides (such as the Seven Dwarfs ride) I caught up with Little Miss on Main Street for some shopping as we made our way out of the park. Our timing could not have been better — during the parade, Disney had fake snow machines running. Combine that with the holiday themed floats, and, music; the atmosphere was outstanding.
A final observation is that there were several character meet-and-greet photo opportunities where the characters had Christmas themed apparel. The exact characters I had found out ahead of time through searching online, a upside to Disney having such a large, loyalty, and detail oriented fan base. I couldn’t find any examples, but I do recall Nightmare before Christmas characters in a Santa hat and white beard.
It was a great evening, as we left the park around 11:30pm, and we were exhausted. After having a day to rest, next up was Hollywood Studios on Thanksgiving Day!
Explore other parts of this trip:
Part 1 – Air Canada Flight Toronto to Orlando
Part 2 – Animal Kingdom & Downtown Disney
Part 3 – Magic Kingdom – Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party (this post!)
Part 5 – Universals, two parks, one day
Part 6 – Flight home