Thoughts on the All-Nighter?

[jjnshane]

My daughter and I started before 6AM on Friday took a little break around 2-5PM and then stayed in the part the rest of the night. It was amazing to watch the sun rise, watch it set and watch it rise again in the park. I am so glad that we did it and would do it again for sure -- but not for another year at least.
The crows were pretty normal until later at night, and from the first DEP until the end of the event we avoided Main Street -- the back of the park had much lighter crowds from 2AM on.
I was surprised by the number of really young kids that were there all night, but who am I to judge. I couldn't have done that with my daughter when she was younger, but she is 11 now and is quite the trooper. She was bound and determined to make it all night just for the bragging rights at her school!
I do think that Disney will do it again, but I really hope they only make it a one a year event -- or even less often. This is something that I think would lose its luster and appeal quickly if it was done several times a year. And I hope next time they allow Cast Members to use their IDs to gain entrance (yes, even more people on Main Street) but we have a lot of CM friends that we would like to hang with all night! One CM said they didn't allow CM to use IDs for entrance or Main Gate pass because they wanted an accurate count of how many guests were coming to the party without the count being skewed with CM in attendance.
This event was much better planned than the first one -- but Disney was really taken by surprise by the number of people who came to the One More Disney Day -- so it was a learning experience. If (when) they do it again, I think it will be even better planned.

 

[Sully83]

Frankly, I don't understand it at all. Is there something magical about staying up all night? Is that a flashback to our childhood where we kinda always wanted to know what it would be like to stay up?

I watched the live stream for quite a while in the evening...the parade...Wishes. and then went to bed. I woke up around 4 AM and thought since I'm awake I think I'll check out what is happening on Main Street. I was amazed at how many people were out there. I was also shocked by the number of strollers with kids in them. Sorta worried me a little. Are parents so immature and self centered that they will disturb the sleep of their child to have the opportunity to stay up all night? Don't we reach a point in our growth that we are able to acknowledge the responsibilities of parenthood and make decisions based on that?

I realize that this is just my opinion, but, I couldn't help but think that were I a young parent (like I once was) and someone said "Hey, let's stay up all night at WDW", I would have had to say, 'I'd love too, but, I have to get my kids tucked in and getting the rest they and I need'. (sigh) I guess the times have changed.

I see your point on kids in strollers but honestly don't see this as a big of deal as you do. I see little kids all the time sleeping in noisey malls and on noisey streets while their parents walk them in their strollers. I am sure the majority of parents that know if their child can't handle something like this would not have them out that late, and the ones that do have a child who can't handle it but still were out there are probably not the greatest parents to begin with and you get parents like that in every generation. For kids older then kids in strollers, lets say the 6 to 10 year old group well I really don't see this effecting them to much. I remember when i was in that age range having sleepovers at my house or friends houses and no matter how hard our parents told us to go to bed, we never did because we had fun just being kids and we either stayed up all night or came close to staying up all night. In my opinion, this is a one night thing in the lifetime of these kids and one night is not going to hurt their growth whatsoever. Quite honestly some of these younger kids at a point have more energy then their parents I am sure there were tons of the adults that wanted to go to bed but were out their because their kids were the ones that didn't want to leave.

 

[WDW_Emily]

We were at the magic kingdom from 10am-230am. We didnt want to stay the whole night because we went to a park the day before and had to be up early the following day. Let me just say that the park from 10-8pm was wonderful. Little crowds, Ariel's undersea adventure was a 20 minute wait, small world was 10, it was great. We were part of the crew who watched wishes from main st. We started out right near the statue of Mickey And after tried to get to adventureland to ride pirates and as other have said, we were stuck for a good hour. We have up that idea and decided to Try to make it to the train on main st finally we got there through traveling through shops but the train was closed. By this time the second projection show started and we had a perfect view from the train station. We then got fast passed to meet Mickey and Minnie in there pjs. Regular linever 100 minutes, fast pass line:40 minutes. Although very packed, we loved taking to people everyone there absolutely loved being there and we were all feeling about Disney. Would do it again just for the awesome people we met in lines. I did feel bad for a few cms though

 

[Unomas]

That's right an hour to walk from Main Street into Tomorrowland.

How many people were in your party? Strollers? I've been to Magic Kingdom on Christmas Day when the park is closed to capacity. Even jam packed it never takes an hour to get down Main Street.

 

[MOXOMUMD]

We were at the magic kingdom from 10am-230am. We didnt want to stay the whole night because we went to a park the day before and had to be up early the following day. Let me just say that the park from 10-8pm was wonderful. Little crowds, Ariel's undersea adventure was a 20 minute wait, small world was 10, it was great. We were part of the crew who watched wishes from main st. We started out right near the statue of Mickey And after tried to get to adventureland to ride pirates and as other have said, we were stuck for a good hour. We have up that idea and decided to Try to make it to the train on main st finally we got there through traveling through shops but the train was closed. By this time the second projection show started and we had a perfect view from the train station. We then got fast passed to meet Mickey and Minnie in there pjs. Regular linever 100 minutes, fast pass line:40 minutes. Although very packed, we loved taking to people everyone there absolutely loved being there and we were all feeling about Disney. Would do it again just for the awesome people we met in lines. I did feel bad for a few cms though

Did you wave at the camera? We were waving back at everyone.

 

[tracyandalex]

we really really wanted to go, but since we were at the World 2 weeks ago we couldn't really do it. At first we didn't really care, but as it got closer we were really wanting to go. To us it was a challenge, like I bet you can't be in MK from 6 Am to 6 Am and by the time the day came we were ready to accept the challenge.

To the questions about kids being there (I can't speak for every parent obviously), but some kids can hang. DD4 hangs better than we do most of the time and she would want to be there. Of course I know she would fall asleep in the stroller and that would be fine, but she would love to accept the MK 24 hr challenge. As others have said we would do it with her because it is something special and she would have had Sunday to rest before going back to school. I don't think it would be selfish of us to "do that to her" if it was something she wanted to to do too. Now if things got out of hand and we had to leave we of course would, now perhaps some parents didn't feel that way and I will definitely agree that is wrong. If no one is having fun it's not worth it and it's been my experience that if the kid isn't happy it's quite difficult for everyone else to be.