We planned to spend eight days at the Disney parks before leaving for Miami for our cruise.  Because of the time of year, we expected it to be really busy in all the parks.  We planned to get in a few rides in the morning by arriving for rope drop, use our FastPasses, then spend a good amount of time enjoying the atmosphere. 

One of the major issues we faced in planning was related to our annual passes.  As a Disney Annual Passholder, you are only allowed to hold seven days of reservations at one time under the FastPass+ system.  We planned to visit for a total of eleven days, so we could not reserve enough passes for the entire trip.  We had a one night stay at the Dolphin, with the remainder of the nights off property.  The reservation at the Dolphin allowed us to book our FastPasses starting 60 days from the night of our stay (December 31st).  Our strategy in planning was to book the last three nights of our trip first (December 29-31), since we thought those would be the busiest days.   After booking those FastPasses, we moved on to booking the first four days, December 16-19.  For the remaining nights of our trip (December 20-23), we had to book FastPasses the night before after we’d used up the FastPass reservations for that day.  For example, as we were leaving the park on December 19, we booked our FastPass reservations for December 20.  This strategy actually worked out pretty well, with the exception of Flights of Passage. 

Hollywood Studios

With Hollywood Studios under construction, there weren’t as many attractions as usual — but there were still a few things we wanted to do while in the park.  Our first was to collect our Annual Passholder gift, this awesome magnet:

We also wanted to check out the decorations as well as see the special holiday events.  We got these done over two separate visits to the parks.

We saw the Sunset Season’s Greetings as well as Jingle Bell, Jingle Bam.  Sunset Season’s Greetings was projected onto the Tower of Terror.  Jingle Bell, Jingle Bam was projected onto the Chinese Theater.  We really enjoyed both.

We made sure to ride of Tower of Terror as well, which was really the last ride/attraction we hadn’t done at Walt Disney World.  I hadn’t ridden it before because I was worried about aggravating a previous neck injury.  But my younger daughter convinced me it would be fine.  It was a great ride, both from the ride experience and the themeing. 

We made sure to stop at The Hollywood Brown Derby for dinner one night as well, it is always a family favorite.

We only visited Hollywood Studios for two half day visits.  We definitely miss the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights that we took in two years ago, but we did enjoy the two alternatives that we watched.  I’m sure once Star Wars Land and Toy Story Land are completed, it will be nearly impossible to even move in Hollywood Studios.

Here are the other parts of the trip:

Planning | Travel | Hollywood Studios | Magic Kingdom | Epcot | Animal Kingdom | WDW Part 2

 

 

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