Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party 2013 Tips

Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party is a special hard ticket event held in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. For 2013, the party will be held on November 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 21, & 22, and December 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, & 20. After December 20, the party entertainment is available to all day guests (and included in theme park admission), but waiting until Christmas week also means going during the busiest time of the year, and when rooms and dining are most expensive.

Here is our party review and tips for 2013, based upon our experiences attending the party for the last five consecutive years. The Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party 2013 schedule has not yet been announced, but it will take place select dates in November and December. Ticket prices will vary for 2013 based upon whether you purchase in advance or on the day of, are a child or adult, and whether you have an Annual Pass, Disney Vacation Club membership, or some other affiliation that entitles you to a discount. In any case, the event is not cheap, starting at $57 for children with advance purchase on select nights and exceeding $70 for adults on the “Premium” night! To purchase tickets, visit Disney’s Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party page.

That said, if you’re visiting Walt Disney World in November or December, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party is an absolute must-do! But more on that later. First, let’s provide an overview of the events to those who haven’t been.

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Disneyland Paris 2012 Trip Report: Part 2

Before we get to the meat of this installment of the Disneyland Paris Christmas 2012 trip report, a couple of housekeeping items. First, thanks for all of the comments to the first installment. It was cool for us to see so many comments from so many different places. For this installment, I would love it if anyone from outside North America who is reading would leave a comment. Even if you don’t have anything to say–it can be as simple as, “Greetings from ______________!” I don’t know why, but seeing these comments from other countries really makes my day! Second, the website seems to be doing fine with these photo heavy trip reports since I made the backend changes, so I’ve decided to really push things–this installment has over twice as many photos as the last installment (well over 100) AND you can click each of the photos in this installment to view them larger. So the photos are double the size and there are twice as many…hopefully this doesn’t end up causing me any problems!

Okay, on with the report! After doing two of the three “biggest” attractions on our list (Space Mountain: Mission 2 being the other), we headed over to Fantasyland to knock out a few of those attractions. I didn’t take any photos on any of the first ride-throughs, so I’ll share my thoughts on these later. From there, we felt like we could relax a bit and enjoy that famed Disneyland Paris ambiance. Just a few years ago I couldn’t have imagined being in a park we had experienced dozens of times and slowing down–let alone a brand new one on our first day there–which I guess goes to show how our touring style has changed (evolved?).

Frontierland was the first stop, as I had read much about its backstory in Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality. However, almost as soon as we stepped back into Frontierland, we noticed that Phantom Manor had no wait. We didn’t know if this was a bubble in the crowd or what, so we jumped at the opportunity. I still only took a handful of photos, mostly in the stretching room, as there was so much I missed the first time. (more…)

Christmas 2012 Disney World Trip Report Day 2

Before I get started, thank you all for the great response to the first day of the trip report. It was quite popular and despite that it only caused the website to go down once! Since the site goes down about 4 times per day on a normal day now, I’ll consider it only being down once because of the trip report a huge success! We really appreciate all of the comments and tweets, likes, pins, etc. of the post. As always, we love when you help spread the word about the blog. Anyway, since the trip report didn’t cause any real issues with the functionality of the site, I’m already gearing up for writing more of them!

As a thanks for the support, we’re letting you choose the next trip report via this poll on Facebook. Although I haven’t voted in the poll, my vote would be for Disneyland Paris. Not to bias you or anything, but that trip report would be fun, unique, and (I think) enjoyable even for those who will never visit. However, past response to Disneyland Paris content on the blog has been awful, and I don’t want to waste my time writing that report if only a few of you are going to read it.

On with day 2 of the Christmas trip report…

The morning started out with me going on advance scouting to the International Gateway entrance of Epcot to try renewing our Annual Passes at the special $399 Disney Vacation Club discounted price while Sarah got ready and met up with me at Test Track. This advance scouting was in no way necessary, but I guess the substantial discount was like the Disney equivalent of a heist on the Smithsonian, so we wanted to make sure all of our ducks were in a row. The transaction went flawlessly, and my AP was renewed within about 5 minutes, giving me an extra 25 minutes to loiter around before the turnstiles opened. I don’t know why I thought there might be any issues with this, but oh well. (more…)

Christmas 2012 Disney World Trip Report Day 1

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these things. I wonder if I still know how. That, of course, assumes that I knew how in the first place. And not that our trip reports were a collection of random anecdotes, rants, and thoughts–and very little reporting on our actual trip–which were all basically scrolled over as most “readers” skipped from photo to photo of the actual trip. I’ve mentioned this a few times on Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps even here on the blog, but trip reports were put on indefinite hold due to increases in traffic and strains the trip reports were causing on the server. I think I’ve found a workable solution to this problem, but since I know next to nothing about backend website stuff, there’s a good chance that I’ve solved nothing.

The solution (assuming it works) is making the website more light-weight, and focusing solely on the best photos from our trip, which means fewer photos, but also higher quality ones. (Sorry.) If you were able to load this page on the first try, call me ‘Zuck. If it took multiple tries and the images are displaying as red Xs, keep calling me Tom.

We’ve skipped a few trips between our last trip report and this one on our most recent trip from December 2012, and the biggest reason for this is because the December 2012 trip was a short 3 day trip, so a “test” trip report for it shouldn’t be too difficult. Ideally, I’d like to write trip reports for all of the trips we’ve skipped (especially Disneyland Paris), but I don’t know if that will happen. For now, here’s our December 2012 Walt Disney World trip report.

Obviously the trip started out at the airport, and each visit to the airport includes a trip to McDonald’s. It goes without saying that I had a feast of royal proportions there. This would be the first of many incredible feasts of the day. The rest of the airport experience was relatively mundane. Luckily, our flight was a nice, direct shot on AirTran, so we were to Orlando within a few hours.

Once there, our first stop was at the Disney’s Magical Express desk to make reservations for the service. This trip was sort of last minute, so we hadn’t even made our DME reservations until we got to that desk. Until last year, I didn’t even know this was possible. I always thought you had to call in advance. It was great to learn that you don’t, as we never check bags on our way to Florida anymore, so there’s no advantage (i.e. luggage tags) to calling in advance.

Our ride to BoardWalk Inn, our resort at Walt Disney World, was surprisingly short. Normally, like clockwork it seems, we are the second to last stop when using Disney’s Magical Express. It doesn’t matter where we stay, that’s the second to last stop. Better than the last, I suppose. This time, we were the second stop! We celebrated with a glorious feast of peppermint cupcakes at BoardWalk Bakery. I’ve mentioned in the past that this is the best cupcake at Walt Disney World, and it definitely lived up to that reputation. (more…)

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our family to yours! Regardless of what you celebrate during this holiday season, we hope you all have had a great holiday season filled with family, friends, fun, and…uhh…Figment? Sometimes the holidays can be hectic, fast-paced, and even stressful, but we hope you’ve had a relaxing holiday season, and if not…we hope a vacation is in the near future for you!

We’ll be back later this week with a “year in review” article as we look back and look forward, sharing some of our mundane plans for this blog in 2013. For now, we wanted to share holiday wishes with you all! Below some festive photos that our sons, Yossarian the Cat and Walter E. Dogsney, wanted to share with you. Although they don’t write articles for the blog (yet), they are actually big contributors. They typically fight for positioning on my lap as I sit down to write articles for the blog at night. (more…)