One of my favorite places to visit during the Christmas season is Disney World. Both Christmas and Disney World on their own are magical. Add them together, the magic multiples! But there are some very definite do’s and and one big don’t when visiting Disney World at Christmas.
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Do’s for Visiting Disney World at Christmas
The Christmas season is celebrated at Disney World the entire months of November, December, and even a week or two in January. The parks are decked out in festive finery. Christmas music fills the air. Characters dressed in their holiday best wander the parks, and you are sure to see Santa everywhere. Even Santa Goofy makes an appearance! There’s something magical about visiting Disney World at Christmas.
Celebrate Early
If you can possibly arrange it, celebrate Christmas at Disney World in early December. The first two weeks are ideal. All of the Christmas festivities in all four parks are available, but crowds are much lower than later in the month. The absolute worst time in terms of crowds to visit is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. So plan to celebrate the actual holiday elsewhere!
Arrive Early & Stay Late
If you must go Christmas week, go early and stay late at the parks. Crowds will be high, and this will not be a restful vacation. Ride times will be lowest early in the morning and late at night. You should stay in a hotel with resort benefits to get in 30 minutes early each day. Even better, stay in a deluxe hotel to unlock extended evening hours. I highly recommend staying in the Walt Disney World Swan, Swan Reserve, or Dolphin hotel. The properties are Marriott hotels on Disney property and are within walking distance to both EPCOT and Hollywood Studios. They offer both early entry and extended evening hours into the parks. And they run $100+ a night less than similar Disney hotels. If you have a stash of Marriott points (or Chase Ultimate Rewards points), you can stay there for free!
Afternoon breaks may be possible, but don’t count on it as parks may close to capacity. You don’t want to leave for an afternoon nap and not get to go back to a park in the evening! For this reason, you may want to purchase Park Hopper tickets for your Christmas trip. If one park closes for capacity reasons, you can simply hop to an open park.
Still, there are a lot of great things that happen only during Christmas week at Disney World. There is an up-charge event, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, in November and December. Tickets this year cost $149-199 per person. But after the last party around the 20th of December, many of the entertainment elements occur during a regular park day. You can see Minnie’s Wonderful Christmas Time Fireworks and enjoy Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmastime Parade for free the week of Christmas. It even “snows” on Main Street!
Make Dining Reservations
You can make advanced dining reservations (ADRs) at Disney World 60 days prior to your trip. If you are going during a crowded time, it is very important that you log on at 7 a.m. ET 60 days in advance and book the restaurants you want. Even when it’s not crowded, I like to book at least one table service restaurant a day to guarantee time to sit down and eat at a table at a reasonable time. While you can absolutely just eat at counter-service restaurants that don’t require reservations, having a sit-down meal reservation takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
Schedule Down Time
If you are going early in the Christmas season, you should have lower crowds and can fit in some afternoon rest breaks. But if not, consider taking at least one rest day during your trip. Fighting crowds and standing in line is exhausting. You will need some time to rest. It’s often warm enough to swim in December in Florida. Disney resort hotels have heated pools, so even if it’s a bit chilly, the water will feel great. And there’s plenty to do outside the parks – see below for ideas!
See the Resort Decorations
Every Disney World resort has terrific decorations in their lobbies for guests to enjoy. You could spend a day or more simply touring resorts and admiring the décor! If your time is limited, however, I highly recommend checking out the following resorts:
- Grand Floridian Resort & Spa – beautifully decorated, but the main draw is the life-size gingerbread house in the lobby!
- Wilderness Lodge – perfectly themed for Christmas with a 60-foot tree decorated with woodland animals and roaring fireplaces everywhere.
- Beach Club Resort – aquatic themed decorations and the pièce de résistance, a life-size gingerbread carousel!
Take Advantage of “Free” Entertainment
While you could drop a lot of money on the Christmas party held in the Magic Kingdom, definitely don’t miss all of the special activities at Christmas that are included with your park ticket!
Magic Kingdom
The Magic Kingdom has terrific traditional Christmas decorations throughout the park as well as the following features:
- The Jungle Cruise ride becomes the “Jingle” Cruise where the skippers are homesick during the holiday season so they decorate the queue and boats for Christmas and include holiday references in their tour.
- At night Cinderella Castle is the canvas for rotating projection Christmas scenes, including the “holiday sweater” projection seen in the photos on this post.
EPCOT
EPCOT has the most “free” Christmas features of all the parks:
- The International Festival of the Holidays is located throughout World Showcase so you can learn about how the holiday is celebrated throughout the world through music, food, and holiday storytellers.
- The Candlelight Processional telling the story of Jesus’ birth through music and a celebrity narrator is held nightly.
- The Living with the Land ride is decked out with holiday lights.
- Joyful! A Gospel Celebration of the Season concert occurs throughout the day.
Hollywood Studios
Hollywood Studios has arguably the best Christmas decorations if you love nostalgia and mid-century design! It also has the following:
- Sunset Seasons Greetings which is a projection show on the Hollywood Tower Hotel.
- Santa jets around the park in his red convertible car!
- Olaf makes a special appearance at the end of For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration.
Animal Kingdom
Animal Kingdom is decorated with nature inspired decorations throughout as well as:
- A Tree of Life holiday projection show.
- Animal-shaped luminaries and lanterns decorate Discovery Island.
- Merry Menagerie life-size puppets, their handlers, and musicians mingle with guests in Discovery Island.
Disney Springs
Disney Springs is a great place to visit during the holidays – you don’t even need a park ticket!
- Enjoy the Christmas Tree Stroll and visit 20+ beautifully decorated themed trees all over the shopping district – you can pick up a map of the trees at any store.
- Meet Santa – you can join a virtual queue and wait your turn while browsing in the shops.
- Holiday entertainment is everywhere – from music shows and DJs on the stages to Toy Soldier Stilt Walkers and Snowflake Skaters on the streets.
- Enjoy “snow” every night in Town Center.
Prepare for All Types of Weather
While it “snows” in Disney Springs nightly and in Magic Kingdom during the Christmas party, you aren’t likely to encounter the real stuff there. However, Florida weather in December is highly variable. One day it might be freezing, and the next you are sweating buckets. If you don’t want to drop $75 for a sweatshirt in the parks, plan for all contingencies.
When I go to Disney World in December, I pack both shorts and pants, long and short sleeve tops, a light jacket, a fleece jacket, and gloves. And when I was there in December 2020, I wore all of these things! Plan to dress in layers and always have a jacket available for mornings and evenings. You can always rent a locker if you don’t want to haul around your extra layers all day. And don’t forget to toss a few rain ponchos in your bag. Rain isn’t as common in December as it is in other months, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared!
Have a Plan if You Get Separated from Your Group
When crowds are high at Disney World, it’s incredibly easy to lose track of someone in your travel party. If everyone has a cell phone, that’s no big deal. But many people travel to Disney World with young children. Make sure you have a plan in advance if this happens.
First , take a photo of your child every morning so that you can quickly and easily show the photo to people helping you look. Also, make sure that kids know who to go to if they are lost. On your first day in the park, point out a Disney employee and show your kids how to identify one. Disney employees all have name badges, so that’s a good clue. I also told my kids when they were young that if they couldn’t find an employee, they should ask a mom with kids for help.
There are also a few tools you can invest in. I highly recommend strollers for kids at Disney World. You can rent strollers that will hold kids up to a 65 lbs., so don’t be embarrassed to cart around your hefty 7 year old! You will be glad to have your child safely ensconced in a stroller while you fight the crowds exiting parks after fireworks! Another tool is to purchase temporary tattoos with your phone number. Or if you are cheap like me, you can find a way to teach your child your phone number by setting it to music. When my kids were little, we would sing my cell phone number over and over and over again. If you ask them my phone number now over a decade later, they still remember but they have to sing it!
Pack Your Patience
If you only take to heart one “do” in this list, please let it be this one. Visiting Disney World at Christmas is magical. But it’s also stressful. Disney World is complicated and expensive always. During the holidays, you can’t avoid crowds. You will walk 10+ miles a day. The kids will complain. You and your spouse will get testy with one another. But you can avoid major blow ups with a few key strategies:
- Limit your expectations – read more about this below.
- Practice extreme grace – if your kid complains or your wife snaps at you, know that you really aren’t the cause – they are just overwhelmed.
- Plan down time – take breaks, even if it’s just having ice cream on a bench.
- Have a plan for long lines – download books or movies or games on your phone, look for Hidden Mickey’s in queues, play Head’s Up with your family, or simply shoot the breeze with others standing in line and make new friends!
One Big Don’t for Visiting Disney World at Christmas – Don’t Expect to Do Everything!
No matter when you visit Disney World, you will never be able to do everything. Even if you visited for an entire month! There’s just so much to see and do. But it’s particularly challenging at Christmastime.
My advice is to make a list of must-do activities and create a plan to do those activities. I’m a huge fan of Touring Plans where you create personalized plans for each Disney park and get an idea of how long you can expect to wait in line and how long each attraction takes. You can purchase a membership, but it’s free to make personalized plans. Using Touring Plans software to map out your day gives you a reasonable estimate of how much you can do. Then if you can do more, great!
But remember to slow down and enjoy the ambiance. You can spend all of your time running from attraction to attraction, waiting in lines, and experiencing frustration by the crowds. Instead, take time to soak up the ambiance. There are beautiful decorations everywhere. If you love Christmas music, you will be in heaven! And you can see so many excited children running about. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
What’s your best tip for visiting Disney World at Christmas?
Share it below! And if you are a Disney fan, don’t miss my other posts on Disney: Visiting Disney World at Halloween, 5 Reasons to Visit Tokyo Disneyland & Disney Sea, Four Reasons for Disney Fans to Love Universal, and 4 Disney Parks in 1 Day Challenge. And subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss a post!
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