Private VIP Tour & Parade Viewing?

[Conno]

Hey all!

My family and I have a DIsney reunion trip planned for November and are fortunate enough to have been able to book a VIP Tour as part of our trip.

One of the things we'd like to do is see Festival of Fantasy without scoping out a spot to watch from 45-60 mins prior to the parade.

Does anyone know if VIP tour guides have access to a viewing area, and if so - where is that for Festival of Fantasy specifically? I've searched around t'interweb, but haven't been able to find anything concrete.

Thanks,
C

 

[holden]

We’ve done a couple of VIP tours but haven’t used them for parade viewing. There are so many places to watch the parade from all along the route. We’ve never stayed out a spot more than a few minutes before a parade starts. I guess it depends how important it is to you.

I like watching the parade from Frontier Land since that’s where it starts. Once we watched from the spot where the floats enter the route. That was great because when the last one was done we turned around and rode BTMR without a wait.

If you are going to be in MK more than one day, I’d recommend catching the parade on a non-VIP tour day. That way you can use the guide for as many attractions as you can. We did 3 parks (15 attractions) with our guide one day in 7 hours. Again, you can decide how you want your tour to go.

Have a great time!

 

[T.G.I.Friday]

They definitely have access, but I’m not sure where it is.

If it’s something that you know you want to do, make sure to let DSS know in advance or tell your guide first thing in the morning. We mentioned it to our guide as something we might want to consider about an hour before the parade started, and she said she would have to see if there was availability or if the space was already full and we’d have to go on a wait list. She very quickly started texting around, but since we decided against it, I’m not sure how it would have played out. She did say that we would have to get there 30 minutes before it started, which was more time than we wanted to allocate to it.

 

[Marthasor]

I have a friend who did one recently and they stood on the railroad platform to watch the parade - YMMV. I would definitely discuss this with VIP Tours to ask what kind of preferred viewing access will be available for your tour.

 

[twodogs]

We did a parade pre-COVID on our VIP tour, and we stood in a roped off section of the RR platform near the park entrance. The view was excellent. We told VIP services that we wanted to book this when we booked our tour, since my DD is a big parade fan. There is limited space for the VIP areas for parades and fireworks, so if you know you want to do them, tell VIP ASAP. For any of these, you will need to start the VIP viewing while you are still on your tour (though it can be the last thing they drop you off to do, ie fireworks). This differs from DLR where you can do VIP viewing areas for events the same day as your tour, but that occur after the end of your tour.