On New Year's Eve there are big fireworks shows at Magic Kingdom and at Epcot. But Magic Kingdom also does the same show on December 30. So we decided to hit both by doing Magic Kingdom on the 30th and Epcot on the 31st. Additionally, Magic Kingdom does their show twice each of those nights: 6:30 and 11:50! So we actually got to see it twice on our night, which was great.
Knowing that staying up until midnight is not a normal thing for me, we certainly could not treat this like a normal theme park day where we were there 30 minutes before the park opened. Instead, I enjoyed coffee in my New Year's pajamas (instead of matching Christmas jammies this year, we did these!) and watched my giraffe and other animal friends.
I tried to warn my family that by arriving so late - and being here on the holiday - we were going to be in HUGE crowds. We needed to plan ahead for snacks, plan ahead for bathroom breaks, in addition to ride lines, of course. But we were planning on mostly lower popularity attractions so figured the bathroom lines would be our real problem. It turned out not to be a big deal. There was certainly a big crowd in the hub at early fireworks time. But other than that it was certainly manageable. Again, I'm sure it was about going in with the right frame of mind and knowing that we didn't have any particular must-dos besides the fireworks, watching the parade, riding Jingle Cruise and riding Space Mountain (both of which have special holiday overlays).
We got eggrolls and churros before getting into the Jingle Cruise line and the hour-ish passed easily enough. I feel like we rode another ride after that (Pirate maybe) but my next photo is eating hot dogs and fries in the Hub before the parade, so maybe we just kept snacking our way through the park!
Next up was Tom Sawyer Island, an attraction we have never done in 10 years and dozens of visits. It's really more of a self-guided park/playground than a ride, and it's usually only open a few hours in the middle of the day. So it doesn't lend itself to our early morning and late night with mid-day break - or our hide from the Florida heat or rain - strategy. It was fun and had more shade than I was expecting, which might be a nice hangout for families looking to let kids run when they can't in otherwise close quarters in the main park. William liked the room of cannons. My favorite was the unique views of Big Thunder Mountain and Haunted Mansion.
Oh, yes, those crowds did materialize for the fireworks. Or there was a time when everyone was in one spot. We took that opportunity to head over to Tomorrowland to watch from there. It was an obstructed view, but we stood right in front of the Space Mountain entrance and jumped on the ride for a short wait as soon as it was over. The holiday overlay for Space has red and green strobe lights and punk rock Deck the Halls playing. With those lights flashing, we could see the ride track and that makes Space extra scary and cool! We rode it Christmas Day 2019 like this, so we were thinking it might be happening, but it didn't run during our COVID Christmas 2020 trip, so we were delighted to get to experience it this year!
We got to see "snow" on Main Street and the castle projection show on our way to dinner. Our favorite holiday dinner at Disney is Liberty Tree Tavern, which serves family style platters of traditional favorites (beef roast, turkey, pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, cranberries, and an amazingly good salad). It's actually very good tasting, too, as we normally avoid buffet type foods outside of brunch. But this has become our holiday tradition and we stuffed ourselves full before the dessert came and then found room for the dessert anyway! Especially William. After years of us cleaning his plate, now he is cleaning ours. Not too many more photos until he is taller than us!
A little more shopping and another attraction or two and we found our spot for the evening fireworks finale. The crowds were much more bearable than earlier, and we got a great view in front of the castle. This show is advertised as being 360 degrees, which we couldn't see from Tomorrowland. From our spot on Main Street we could. There were fireworks going off behind the castle and behind the train station. I wonder what they looked like from the Polynesian or Grand Floridian across the lagoon?!
I tried not to take too many pictures because I wanted to enjoy the show. I did take a video which will be too long to post. But I'll say that this was the best fireworks show I've ever seen. It was better (to me) than the one we saw at Epcot the next evening. John liked the Epcot fireworks more than I did, but I never got a clear answer on if he liked them more than Magic Kingdom's! We made a speedy exit after the show and were back to our resort in less than 20 minutes thanks to luck or more of my being wrong about the crowds. Whatever it was, I'll be thankful for it!
