Has anyone here on TUG seen the new(ish) Starlight parade and the fireworks on the same night?
We arrive at Boulder Ridge on Sat Jan 31, and have a 6-7 hr drive to get there. Since we’ll arrive around check in time, our plan was to get settled and grab a low key dinner likely at Geyser Point. And then make an early night of it, since we’ll likely be tired and were thinking of rope dropping the MK the next morning.
However, they just extended MK hours to 11pm that night (from 9pm) which makes me wonder if we should consisted the MK on our arrival day, given that it’s the only day of our trip that we could see Starlight, which we’ve not yet seen. If we did this, we’d probably try to see the fireworks which we otherwise were not planning to see. We’ve seen them before and were very impressed and would like to see them agains, however we haven’t because we hate crowds.
We are moderately interested in parades but this one looks cool. With the extended park hours, there will now be two parades. It will be 7:45 Starlight, 9pm fireworks, and 10pm Starlight.
So back to hating crowds: we understand the second viewing of Starlight is less crowded and we understand a good place to view Starlight is near MK entrance (because the parade starts near there, the views are good and you can exit the park while others are still watching the parade beating the crowds to the transport home).
I see two options:
A. Arrive the park around 7:15pm and see if we can get a good parade viewing spot near the park entrance. If we can’t, hit up some rides and then proceed to plan B. If we can, watch the first Starlight show, then walk behind the parade to the castle hub and try to snag a fireworks spot. We’d prefer not to be in the crush of people exiting the park after the fireworks, so we’d probably have to do a ride or a few rides after. This option entails waiting 30 min for parade and 1 hour of parade waiting.
B. Arrive the park whenever we can get there, but around 8pm find a fireworks viewing spot near the base of Main Street. Watch fireworks there and then hang out in the same spot for the parade. This option entails waiting 1 hour for the fireworks and then around 40 min for the parade. So it’s a little more waiting time but we don’t have to move viewing spots.
Question 1: Are both of these plans viable?
Question 2. Which plan is better?
PS I am normally in favor of the dessert party, we did it once and it was a rare Disney up charge that felt total worth it to me even though the desserts are mediocre and who wants that much dessert anyway? However, I don’t want to commit to that for this particular visit because there’s a chance we’re too tired from the drive to go at all. And also because I think there’s no option good with the dessert party to see the early parade and to get to the entrance to view the late parade there you’re stuck in the post fireworks crush of people trying to exit the park and I want to avoid that.
