Report from 12/5:
I know it is kind of late for a report on a certain date, but maybe it will help someone.
-Arrived around 5:40 (took forever for a bus to arrive at Sports, but that is another story).
-Got our special SOTMK cards at the fire station.
-Met our other party of people at Jingle Cruise and rode that with a FP+
side note: I loved the Jingle Cruise. I thought all the decorations were so clever. We rode it maybe 6 times the whole trip and I thought the 'jingleness' really was dependent on your skipper. One time we had a skipper who maybe did 1 or 2 Christmas jokes. One time we had a really excellent skipper who was very into it and seemed to do a Christmas joke for every situation, the bah humbug, the python in a pear tree, the gorillas trashing the camp as in laws, the Christmas carolers (he took that one really far and it was super funny, shouting to get down, don't make eye contact, turn off all the lights). And I'm sure even more jokes I've now forgotten.
Anyway back to the party
-We wanted to be in line for our first characters at about 20 til, so we headed over toward the Circus area and found the line up for the ducks. We were about the 5th group in line at 15 til 7. They came out right on time and we had our pictures before we knew it. The ducks were so much fun, Scrooge pretended to swim through his money and Donald was off to the side shaking his head at him.
-We had thought to check party merchandise at the circus tent at this time, but instead we ran off to find our next characters.
-Next up was the Winnie the Pooh characters. They weren't slated to come out for another 20 minutes but we decided to wait since the line was somewhat short. I thought the characters were going to be dressed in their Victorian Christmas gear (Pooh in a top hat) but instead they just had scarves on. Eeyore was in rare form and was super animated and flirting with all the girls. It was a really good meet.
-Next we arrived at the carousel and Mary Poppins and co. were not out yet, but there were about 3 groups in line and their handlers were there and said they'd be out in 10 minutes. So we waited and they arrived right on time. Had our best interaction of the night here.
-After this we got some cookies and hot chocolate at Pinocchio's, there was no wait. We sat outside and ate (It was really nice out, I think high 70s). My taste buds must not be as advanced as some, because I thought the cookies were good and so was the hot chocolate.
-I think we confused the Christmas party with the Halloween one, cause next we decided a ride on HM sounded good. Ended up having to wait about 15 minutes.
-It was about 850 at this time so we figured it was time to head to the castle for the fireworks. It was really crowded but we managed to find space to sit about mid hub. I don't know why people don't stay seated for the fireworks...we went to a
MNSSHP earlier this year and everyone sat down and it was a really nice view and so relaxing and nice. Oh, someone also dumped chocolate ice cream on my BF's sister's pants, then just kinda shrugged and walked away. That was...nice.
-I wasn't really impressed by the Christmas fireworks. I felt they had very little Disney influence...and compared to the Halloween ones I just wasn't feeling it.
-After the fireworks we wanted to head to Frontierland to get seats for the parade. The congestion was awful, as usual it seems. People just need to calm down. Shouting that you are coming through, or pushing me, will get you nowhere. Trust me, if I had somewhere to go I would have taken it.
-We got front row seats by Liberty Tree tavern and 2 of us went off to find some party pins. The Frontierland shop only had the Toy Soldier left but told us they had heard the Circus shop had Donalds left (yeah, we should ran in after meeting the ducks earlier). Walked all the way there and they only had toy soldiers left too. Made it all the way back to our seats with about 5 minutes to spare before the parade.
-I have mixed thoughts on the parade. I compared it to the Halloween one, of course, and thought Halloween was much better. There were parts of the Christmas one that I really enjoyed, like the skiers, the reindeer, the toy soldiers had some awesome marching maneuvers, and the little ponies pulling Cinderella's carriage.
-After the parade I made a vinylmation trade, then we asked around about where the Country Bears were to be meeting and we found their spot. There was one other couple waiting, then one group jumped ahead of us when they came out so we were third in line. Only had to wait a few minutes then they were out. The bears were very...odd. One of them kept trying to eat my Christmas light necklace and they were all super gentle, I think because their bulk makes it hard for them to see and maneuver.
-Next up was the last castle Christmas show. We got seats 3 rows back on the left hand side and were able to sit and see perfectly. This show was....weird. Still liked it because it featured Donald a lot and I enjoyed his dance.
-We had a little bit of party time left so we decided to see if Aladdin and Abu were out, they were not and Jasmine and Genie's line had already closed anyway.
-Instead we got some last minute cookies/apple juice and rode POTC, then got some Photopass pics on the way out.
Overall: we got all the characters we really wanted. We thought their lines were pretty good overall. It was a sold out party but I didn't really notice at all until we were trying to get out of the castle area after the fireworks. I think the party merchandise is badly mismanaged. Why not order enough pins for all the party dates, or else dole them out better? I see plenty on ebay, so maybe 1 per person would work better. I like to have mementos of special events and Donald is my favorite so it would have been nice to have the opportunity to purchase one. I wanted to see the Pirate Christmas show but I couldn't find times on the brochure and then I kind of forgot about it.
Anyway, I thought it was a good experience, but not great. I'm perfectly willing to go to 2-3 Halloween parties, but I think one Christmas is enough.