Trip Report *COMPLETED* Simply Having a Magical Christmastime - Nov/Dec 2022

Hellloooo humans! And Happy Holidays! I had every intention of starting this trip report earlier in the month, but work has been busy busy busy ever since we returned from vacation, and of course we had Christmas preparations as well. Nevertheless, I'm ready to get this report cranked out while the memories are still fresh on my mind! Let's get this party started!

Who: Me (Katie), my husband Jason, and our then 17-month-old son, Lincoln

When: Sunday, November 27th - Friday, December 2nd

Where: All Star Movies

As I mentioned in my Pre-Trip Report, we're planning to drop down to one trip per year starting in 2023 - a bittersweet decision after several years of J and I being passholders - so we tried to soak up as much of the magic as possible on this trip. Lincoln is at a really fun age, and he had an absolute blast on this trip. We're already looking forward to next year!

 

[k8einwdw]

Thursday, December 1st - Epcot Day - Continued

After meeting Mickey, we had one more stop to make before we were ready to venture in to the World Showcase...okay, two, including the Baby Care Center. Lincoln had not met Santa the year prior, and we figured, what better place to meet Santa for the first time than Disney World? Santa and Mrs. Claus used to meet in the American pavilion, but now it's just Santa, in the Odyssey building. This was the longest line we waited in the entire trip. Santa spent a good bit of time with every family, which is great, but it ended up taking 40-45 minutes, which feels like an eternity with an antsy toddler. When it was our turn, L was initially unsure what to think about Santa, but he eventually warmed up to him, and showed him a sticker he got in line, and asked Santa about his boots. Mommy was too cheap to pay for PhotoPass for the day, so here are the watermarked pictures.

Don't worry, we got better Santa pictures later in the season.

While it was definitely cool to be able to say that Lincoln met Santa for the first time at WDW, J and I both agreed we're not waiting in that line on our next trip.

After meeting Santa, we were finally headed in to the World Showcase. We stopped first at the Mexico festival booth, where we got the Giant Tostada de Barbacoa ($10.50.) J and I both enjoyed it, but agreed it was a little pricey for what you get.

Afterward, we headed into the pyramid to ride Gran Fiesta Tour. Lincoln enjoyed dancing to the music and pointing out Donald anytime we saw him.

After we got off the ride, we saw that Donald was going to be meeting outside in about 20 minutes, and he was the only Sensational Six character that L had not met on the trip, so we decided to wait it out. J grabbed a margarita from Choza de Margarita, while L and I staked out our spot in line (we ended up being the second party in line). When Donald arrived, Lincoln....wanted nothing to do with him. J took L up to see Donald while I pushed the stroller off to the side and took pictures, and L was more interested in chasing me down. We think he may have been character-ed out by this point in the trip.

After meeting Donald, we continued our way through World Showcase. We skipped over Norway, since we'd be back for our Frozen LL return time later in the day. We did not see anything that piqued our interest at the China festival booth, but we did peruse the shops.

Up next: More World Showcase fun

 

[mpaulam]

Love the pictures with Santa..and Donald

 

[fractal]

I'm helping a friend plan a first trip with his wife and 5 year old daughter. The daughter wants to meet characters so your report is really helping me give him some places to eat and see them.

Do character still autograph books if you bring one?

 

[RememberWhen]

I'm helping a friend plan a first trip with his wife and 5 year old daughter. The daughter wants to meet characters so your report is really helping me give him some places to eat and see them.

Do character still autograph books if you bring one?

They do! My DD5 had a blast this summer getting autographs from all her character friends. There are a couple who can’t. I think Olaf doesn’t. But they give you a card with his signature.
Another idea that we’ve done in the past is to get a white pillowcase and some fabric markers. We also had a loop (maybe for embroidery?) to keep the cloth steady while they sign. The kids love their character pillowcases. We write the date and details of the trip on them too, so they’re a fun keepsake.

 

[Swissmiss]

They do! My DD5 had a blast this summer getting autographs from all her character friends. There are a couple who can’t. I think Olaf doesn’t. But they give you a card with his signature.
Another idea that we’ve done in the past is to get a white pillowcase and some fabric markers. We also had a loop (maybe for embroidery?) to keep the cloth steady while they sign. The kids love their character pillowcases. We write the date and details of the trip on them too, so they’re a fun keepsake.

To add on to the pillowcase idea (loved it!) we’ve had them sign the matting for picture frames.

 

[k8einwdw]

Love the pictures with Santa..and Donald

His reaction to Donald cracked us up...he was 1000% uninterested

I'm helping a friend plan a first trip with his wife and 5 year old daughter. The daughter wants to meet characters so your report is really helping me give him some places to eat and see them.

Do character still autograph books if you bring one?

They do! My DD5 had a blast this summer getting autographs from all her character friends. There are a couple who can’t. I think Olaf doesn’t. But they give you a card with his signature.
Another idea that we’ve done in the past is to get a white pillowcase and some fabric markers. We also had a loop (maybe for embroidery?) to keep the cloth steady while they sign. The kids love their character pillowcases. We write the date and details of the trip on them too, so they’re a fun keepsake.

@RememberWhen is correct - most do, but not all. The characters that are doing distanced "Character Sightings" like Stitch on the Tomorrowland stage, Rey walking around Batuu, etc. don't do autograph books.

To add on to the pillowcase idea (loved it!) we’ve had them sign the matting for picture frames.

Back when I was a Disney travel agent, I gifted some of my clients the picture frames with matting for characters to sign - I think that's a really cute idea, especially for a first trip. I've also seen families bring a book like the "Junior Encyclopedia of Animated Characters" to have characters sign their page, although I think that works better for families who go more than once. That's what we're planning to get for Lincoln.

 

[k8einwdw]

Thursday, December 1st - Epcot Day - Continued

After China, we headed into the Germany pavilion, where we got the Cheese Fondue in a Bread Bowl ($8.25) from the Bavaria Holiday Kitchen festival booth. You can't go wrong with bread and cheese - all three of us loved this one.

Afterward, J wanted to get a German beer, and I wanted to get the caramel gingerbread cookie from Karamell Kuche, so we decided to divide and conquer - L joined me in going to Karamell Kuche. We also stopped for a few minutes to let L watch the trains in Germany. He kept saying "Train, come back!" anytime one of them went out of his line of vision.

We wanted to give Lincoln something a little more substantial to eat so he would hopefully take a nap, so we got him the Tortellini in Brodo (cheese tortellini served in broth) from the Tuscany Holiday Kitchen in the Italy pavilion ($9.50). While he was eating, we stopped to watch Sergio's show from a shaded area.

After Sergio's show, we walked around the Italy and USA pavilions for a while, hoping L would fall asleep. After a good 20-30 minutes of that, we decided to go ahead and head over to Norway for our Frozen Ever After LL return time. We got stuck here for a while...

Lincoln really enjoyed Frozen Ever After, and called it the "Let it Go Ride" for the rest of the day.

Afterward, we had to stop in the gift shop to take his picture with the troll.

After all, it is a family tradition.

Since we hadn't been through the Canada half of the World Showcase yet, and we would be ending the night in the Italy pavilion, we decided to conquer the rest of the World Showcase starting in Canada, rather than walking alll the way back the way we had just come.

In Canada, we skipped the festival booth, but enjoyed perusing the shops.

Up next Even more World Showcase

 

[k8einwdw]

I'm helping a friend plan a first trip with his wife and 5 year old daughter. The daughter wants to meet characters so your report is really helping me give him some places to eat and see them.

One thing I would highly suggest is keeping an eye on the times for each character in the app. The outdoor characters don't meet all day, and they'll close off the lines a few minutes before the end of their set, so if it's a character that's really important for their daughter to meet, I'd tell them to plan on getting there toward the beginning of one of their time slots.

 

[k8einwdw]

Thursday, December 1st - Epcot Day - Continued

After Canada, we moved on to the UK pavilion, where we perused the shops in search of a Tigger plush for Lincoln. We didn't have any luck, but Santa came through on Christmas morning, and L got a Tigger plush in his stocking that he now sleeps with every night. After the UK, we popped over to the shop at the International Gateway in hunt for a shirt I wanted. I had been searching what seems like every. single. shop. the entire trip for this Minnie and Daisy holiday t-shirt. Did I need another Disney t-shirt? No. But I love Minnie and Daisy, and I love Christmas, and I thought this shirt was just too cute. The only time we saw it the entire trip was in a window display at the Emporium, and they didn't have any out on the floor.

I did see a handful of people wearing the shirt throughout the trip, and I was so tempted to ask them where they found it. Unfortunately the International Gateway shop didn't have it either, so we left empty-handed. We did take some pictures of their cute window displays - it's hard to tell because of the glare, but Huey, Dewey, and Louie and Donald and Goofy all have Candlelight Processional costumes on. So cute!

After the International Gateway, we made our way in to the France pavilion, where I got the Frozen Hot Chocolate Martini ($13.95) from the La Marche de Noel Holiday Kitchen. As you can see in the picture, it was a little drippy, but it was so good. I don't usually spend the money on festival drinks for myself, but I'll always make an exception for the boozy slushes from the France booth. They hit just right every single time.

While I was enjoying my drink, we meandered around the France pavilion, and grabbed some pictures of their holiday decorations.

After France, we cruised through Morocco, and stopped to watch their musical group perform for a minute before moving on to Japan. In Japan, Jason got the Sushi Tree ($7.50) from Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen. While he was in line for that, Lincoln and I watched the Matsuriza drummers. L loved their performance, and he clapped and said "good job" when they were done.

After Matsuriza, the Daruma Doll holiday storyteller for Festival of the Holidays came out. J and I have always loved the Daruma Doll storyteller, so we stopped to watch her entire performance. This was a younger performer than we had seen in the past, but she was very engaging - even L enjoyed the performance.

Up next: Finishing up at Epcot

 

[k8einwdw]

Thursday, December 1st - Epcot Day - Continued

After watching the holiday storyteller in Japan, we headed back into the USA pavilion, where I got a Chocolate Crinkle Cookie ($3) from the American Holiday Table booth to save for later that night.

We had some time to kill before our dinner reservation, and the first showing of the Candlelight Processional had started, so we sat at one of the outdoor tables by the booth to listen to the performance and let Lincoln play with his bubble wand for a bit.

When it got to be closer to our reservation time, we headed in to the Italy pavilion. La Befana was about to come out, and she is my and Jason's favorite holiday storyteller, so we found a spot up close to watch her performance. Unfortunately, L was not feeling it, and made that known to everyone around us, so we bailed after a couple minutes.

I checked us in at Via Napoli for our dinner reservation, and they brought us back within just a couple minutes. We were seated at a table with a view of the ovens, so we made sure to position L's high chair so he could see them. He said "Hi Fire" to them several times throughout the meal.

For our meal, we all split the Arancini appetizer and a large Quattro Formaggi pizza. J and I really enjoyed our food. L enjoyed some of his, before throwing a good bit of it on the floor. He had only had a half hour nap earlier that morning, so he was in rare form. Thankfully, our server was also a toddler mom, so she understood how it can be.

After J and I were done eating, and it was apparent that L was not going to eat any more food, we asked for our check, paid, and got the heck out of there (and of course cleaned up after L before we left).

On our way out of the park, we stopped to watch the Beacons of Magic show for a few minutes. Pictures and video truly do not do it justice - it is even more beautiful and moving in person than we had imagined. I really hope this sticks around after the 50th Anniversary.

We finally got to the car around 7:20 to head back to All Star Movies. To no one's surprise, L fell asleep almost immediately. J ended up carrying him back to the room while I pushed the stroller.

I stopped in the gift shop on the way back to the room to get some snacks to bring home with us, as well as an advent calendar - after all, it was December 1st. The box was really cute, but the chocolate was nothing to write home about. They were all the same - solid chocolate - and we got bored with it after a couple weeks.

Once we got back to the room, we tried to start packing to no avail (L was getting in to everything), so we bathed L and got him ready for bed. He was wired after his power nap, so we had a hard time getting him down to sleep. It was around 9:15 when he finally knocked out, and J and I were able to tag team the packing. We got most of our stuff packed and finally headed to bed around 10:30.

Up next: Check Out Day

 

[k8einwdw]

Friday, December 2nd - Check-Out Day

Lincoln awoke around 5:15 this morning, but thankfully, he only stirred and chatted to himself for a couple minutes before falling back asleep until around 5:40. I got up with him and let him play for a few minutes while I started getting myself ready, and then we got Jason up around 6:00. We had done most of the packing the night before, so we just had to pack up the pack-n-play and the stuff we needed to use that morning. We gave L a banana to eat and let him watch some Disney Jr. while we got ourselves ready and finished packing, and I got L ready while J went down to Bell Services to check out a luggage cart.

When J returned to the room with the luggage cart, L and I walked around in the exterior "hallway" with L on the wrist leash so that he would be out of the way while J was loading up the luggage cart. Once he was done loading up, I helped him maneuver the cart on/off the elevator, and then J proceeded to the car to load up while L and I took our time walking with the wrist leash. We hadn't really let him explore the resort while we were there, so I let him take his time seeing everything on the way out to the car. I finally had to pick him up and carry him the rest of the way when he tried to walk in to the food court.

We left All Star Movies around 7:30, and headed to Grand Floridian for our breakfast reservation. We arrived at 7:55, and it appeared that there were two different weddings happening there that day, which made it hard to find a parking spot. We finally found a spot, and we were walking in to the lobby just a couple minutes late for our 8:00 breakfast reservation at Grand Floridian Café. We waited about five minutes to be seated, and enjoyed watching the wedding parties taking pictures outside while we waited.

Our server for this meal was very enthusiastic. Maybe a little too enthusiastic? He was already at our table waiting to take our drink order while we were being seated. While I appreciate the promptness, it takes a minute to settle in at the table with a toddler. Since I didn't have their menu memorized and couldn't remember what all beverages they had, J and I both just got a coffee, and milk for L.

For our breakfast, I ordered the Mickey waffle with sausage (they used to have accompaniments you get get with your waffle, but sadly, those went away post-COVID), J got the Chicken and Waffles, and we ordered L the kid's Minnie pancake with fruit. While you're waiting for your meal, they bring biscuits and citrus butter. I saved some of the citrus butter to put on top of my waffle, and it was delicious!

L absolutely devoured his - pancakes are one of his favorite foods - this was probably the best he ate the entire trip. After we'd all had our fill, we paid for the check and used the restrooms before heading out to the car to leave. On our way out, we stopped to take some pictures of the empty gingerbread house.

We left Grand Flo around 9:15, stopped to get gas at the Speedway over by the Car Care Center on our way out, and we were pulling through the depressing side of the gates at 9:39.

We unfortunately hit a lot of traffic on the way home, and didn't make it home until after 6:00 pm. We did, however, see a Disney bus (one of the Daisy buses) on FL-429 on our way home. I don't know if they had taken it somewhere to get serviced, or maybe they were using it for cruise line transportation, but it was so bizarre seeing a Disney bus off property.

And that's our trip! I'll share my final thoughts in a separate post.

 

[RememberWhen]

Looks like an awesome trip! Thanks for sharing your adventures

 

[cgersic]

So Much Fun!! Thank you so much for your detailed reporting. It's truly been something to look forward to, so now I'll wait for the next one!

 

[Swissmiss]

Thanks for sharing your trip and even more thanks for sharing pictures of your cutie patootie.

 

[Wicked Sisters]

Thank you so much for sharing your lovely adventures. I know your not probably going again until late this year but would you please post some photos of Lincoln through the year as it would be lovely to see how he is growing up.

 

[k8einwdw]

Looks like an awesome trip! Thanks for sharing your adventures

Thanks for following along!

So Much Fun!! Thank you so much for your detailed reporting. It's truly been something to look forward to, so now I'll wait for the next one!

Thank you! We won't be back until the week after Thanksgiving, so I'll be living vicariously through everyone else for now!

Thanks for sharing your trip and even more thanks for sharing pictures of your cutie patootie.

I'm happy to share, this feels like one of the few safe spaces on the internet for me to do so.

Thank you so much for sharing your lovely adventures. I know your not probably going again until late this year but would you please post some photos of Lincoln through the year as it would be lovely to see how he is growing up.

You're right, we won't be back until the week after Thanksgiving. I'll try to share some of our other adventures either here on over on the Chit Chat thread. Lots of non-Disney travels planned this year, and of course L's second birthday coming up!

 

[k8einwdw]

Final Thoughts

I stand by my opinion that the week after Thanksgiving is the best week to go for the holidays at WDW. Crowds were very reasonable, the weather was decent, and it's always nice having a long holiday weekend to pack and prep for the trip. I'll be sad when Lincoln is in school and we can no longer get away with going the week after Thanksgiving.

We went to MK the day of one of the Christmas parties - I had made our park pass reservations before the party dates came out, and we decided to stick with the plan when I read that the park tends to be less crowded during the day on party days. It paid off, because the park was practically empty the first part of the day. We definitely plan to go on a party day again this year. I'd highly recommend going on a party day if you have littles and tend to leave the park early, or even if you plan to hit the parks early, go back to the room for a break, and come back later on for the party.

Genie+ worked out really well for us on this trip. I don't know if it was because of the crowd levels, or because we've become more experienced with the system, but it seemed to go a lot more smoothly than it had in the past. If you're planning to use Genie+ for the first time, I'd highly recommend checking out Mammoth Club on YouTube. Molly (formerly at All Ears) has some really informative videos about Genie+, and her strategies have helped us a lot.

The All Star resorts get a lot of hate, which I've never understood. We've stayed at All Star Movies now twice, and All Star Music once (I also stayed at All Star Sports as a kid, but that was 20-something years ago). We've loved our stay at all of them. While they're not as centrally located as some of the Moderate and Deluxe resorts, and they only offer bus transportation, they're a great bang for your buck. The theming is so much fun for families with kids, and All Star Music also has family suites, if the AoA suites are out of your budget. We wouldn't hesitate to stay at All Stars again.

As many others have said recently, you're not getting as much value for your money at Disney these days - it already costs a pretty penny to go, and then the extras like Genie+ and Individual Lightning Lanes can add up. But, we don't plan on having any more kids, and Lincoln will only be little once, so we'll continue to save up to go as long as we still enjoy it. We will, however, be dropping down to one trip per year. I hope that the return of Bob Iger will bring some positive changes, but the realist in me says Genie+ isn't going away anytime soon.

Money talk aside, we really did have such a fun trip. L is at a really fun age (I think I've said that every month since he was 9 months old - everything before that was survival mode), and even with the few toddler meltdowns, he seemed to really enjoy the trip. There is something so precious about seeing the magic through your child's eyes, and watching him enjoy new things and meet some of his favorite characters is priceless. On our next trip, he should be tall enough for Tomorrowland Speedway and Barnstormer, so I can't wait to see him experience those.

We won't be going back again until the week after Thanksgiving. I'm okay with that right now, but I'm sure I'll have major FOMO once people start posting about Flower and Garden. We're considering renting DVC points for this next trip, so if any of you have any experience with that, I welcome any tips/advice. We do have some non-Disney travel coming up - we're going to the beach with J's parents in May, J and I are doing a New England road trip in the fall for our 10th anniversary, and I'm trying to convince J to go for L's first camping trip sometime in the spring. I'll try to share some updates here and there throughout the year, and in the meantime, I'll be living vicariously through all of you on the boards. I think I say it at the end of every TR, but I really do appreciate everyone here, this is such a special little corner of the internet.

 

[Tiki Traveler]

Thank you for sharing your trip. Some of your photos captured Disney details I knew nothing about, like the Candlelight Processional window display.

Your family is darling. Best wishes for the rest of the year!

P.S. How many days until your next trip report??

 

[Seagull59]

Thanks for sharing your trip with us!

 

[MickeyCB]

Thanks for taking the time to write a report. I really enjoyed following along (as I have on your previous ones as well)!!