Illuminations during Christmas time is extended - make a note of it. After the usual show, which is great, they do another 5-7 minutes of holiday themed fireworks. A great encore to the show.
The Christmas Bells tunnel is great as well. In the main walkway from the World of Tomorrow to the World Showcase there is a huge open air scafolding like thing with lights all over it and it plays Christmas music with the lights moving with the music. It's really cool.
And make sure you check out Disney Studios and the Oswald Family Lights (I think that's the name). The whole place is covered in lights from a family in Arkansas who actually donated the whole thing to them. It's really really cool to see the entire park covered in those things.
And make sure you don't miss Magic Kingdom and their Holiday parade. It snows on Main Street. Very cool. There are special tickets for it I believe (my wife would know more then me) but it's definately worth it.
If you like the place even a little, then the holiday season is a great time to go. We will probably be there around that time as well.
Plans so far are Epcot Dec. 9th, MGM December 10th(sleep in day as we are catching Fantasmic!) .December 11th is my daughters 8th birthday.
So far we have Cinderellas Royal Table booked for Breakfast, Dinner is at Liberty Tavern(another Character meal) and then we have tickets for the Mickey's Merry Christmas.
Plan is to hit Breakfast and rides till Lunch, head back to hotel for a couple hours of downtime/Lunch and then
all night if we can keep the daughter moving.
December 12th is AK, so back to hotel early and then back to MK on the 13th to finish off our trip.
Good thing we come home on a Thursday. Can spend the rest of the week/weekend having a vacation from the vacation before back to work.
The Liberty is pretty good. I've had dinner at the Castle, but not breakfast, but I hear it's pretty good. If you have never done a character meal before, the only rule is wait your turn. The characters spend the whole time going from table to table to take pictures. One of them will make fun of you and one of their handlers will talk to you, if you try to pull them away from another table and don't give other people a turn. I've seen it happen. It's funny. Don't be that family.
I would highly highly recommend a dinner at the Polanesian Resort if you can swing it. The food is outstanding. It's not a character meal, but it is good. It's family style, which means all you can eat but they serve you at the table. They start you off with a huge plate of shrimp cocktail, honey correnader buffalo wings that are the best I've ever had, a huge thing of salad and some of the best potatoes in Florida. The main meal, if you have any room left after that, is BBQ meat on huge skewers that they bring to you - steak, pork, chicken, sausage - it's outstanding. My favorite meal there.
If you even slighly like Italian food, you should really try to get a meal at the Italy pavilion - you need a reservation 90% of the time. It's fantasic. On the other hand, do not eat the italian at Ton'y in MK. It's not very good at all, and the service is less then good. The saving grace of the place is that if you get reservations for around parade time, you can sit outside and watch the parade while you eat.
AK has some good eateries but none stand out to me. There is a BBQ place that's pretty good but I forget the name.
If you are looking for another breakfast with characters idea, I would try either Ches' Mickey at the Contemporary (Mickey, Minny, Donald, Goofy, Pluto) or The Crystal Palace at MK (Pooh and his friends). Both serve roughly the same food, so you would choose based on characters - the food is very good.
During your down time, if you guys want a nice quiet treat, go to Peaches and Cream - I forgot the hotel it's in. It's a little diner type place in once of the nicer hotels there (on the Boardwalk if I remember correctly). The food is good for he setting, but the key there is the ice cream. If your family is up to it, you can get the Kitchen Sink, which is a huge sundae with every ice cream in the place, about a cup of every topping you can imagine, and 3 cans of whipped cream. It's huge, messy and fun to eat. You'll never finish it, so don't try.
Oh, and at the Studios, there is a Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground with huge grass slides and whatnot. The place is usually packed, and the slides are mostly covered because they are dirt tunnels for the huge ants. IT's hard for an adult to get into them, so if you have small kids who might scare easily or aren't great with other kids yet, I'd be very careful in there. People usually watch their own, but the setup of the place lends itself to crying kids sometimes.
I'll post more if I can think of it.
