Reporting back for the Thursday, November 18th party (sorry it's so late! but maybe it's helpful?)
There were two of us. We're both early 30s. We got to the park about 6:35PM. They started letting people in right at about 6:50. Logistically, was annoyed because there was a bottleneck to put on wristbands. If there were a "next" time I would just skrrt past that area and snag one from the park somewhere while settling in for fireworks.
There seemed to be a bottleneck on mainstreet for no particular reason - I guess everyone wants to stop and take photos. Once we got out of it, it opened up. We had a stellar view of the castle. We got a really good spot for to watch the 8PM fireworks (not as good as Happily Ever After IMO but my partner cried so that was worth it haha). It was drizzling the whole time but still not bad enough for us to put on ponchos. The
moment the show ended we booked it to Space Mountain and walked right on with minimal wait. We got off and decided to walk over to Buzz and got on that with less than 10 minute wait - at this point they were checking wristbands. We got out and saw the line for the one carts of ice cream, popcorn and such at Tomorrowland and it was
too much. DO NOT waste a moment of time in those lines. They will be out alllll night. I promise you will get you fill of popcorn and ice cream if you want. Instead, we made our way to watch the new Philharmagic saying hi to Tweedledee and Tweedledum at the carousel. I wanted to check the Reindeer Wranglers in Frontierland for a bit before heading to Big Thunder. The Wranglers were great. I love a good hoedown, but I was getting stressed about time so we left a little early to get to Big Thunder. There was maybe a 10-15 minute wait but still nothing compared to a normal line. After that, we had to decide if we wanted to ride a ride or get back to the main hub for fireworks. We decided fireworks. The Christmas Fireworks are better than HEA but the projections were better for HAE, IMO. Both were fun to get to watch. At that point, the rain became a solid rain and we put on ponchos. We stayed near the edge of the hub to try and get to Jingle Cruise right after fireworks hoping we'd beat the crowd. Seems like a lot of folks didn't do fireworks if they did Jingle Cruise because that line was the longest of the night at 30-35 min. So instead we walked to Big Thunder to ride in the rain and ponchos and walked right on no wait. Ton of fun. From there we wanted to catch the second parade at 11:45 only to be announced at 11:40 they were canceling it. I was so sad. I really wanted to see the parade, heard it was awesome. The cavalcade was so dumb. Another frustrating point is they had to know they weren't going to do the parade over an hour ago with the weather. We wasted time waiting for a parade and would have been happy to then wait for Jingle Cruise in that same amount of time or do BTM for a 3rd time haha. My advice: If the weather is dicey, just do more rides. We strategically picked a spot so that we could get to 7DMT right after the "parade" so the moment the cavalcade passed us going 30mph we walked there. 7DMT was probably our actual longest wait at 15min. We headed to try to catch the last stage show at 12:50 and vowed "if we hear an announcement we're running to Space Mountain." which is exactly what happened (was still so sad to miss the stage show!). We hoofed it to Space Mountain for a third time (love that ride!) and got off exactly at 1AM. The buses were running and we were back to our resort (Pop) easily before 2AM.
Overall, we had a really good time and made the best of the party in a decent bit of wet weather.
Would we do another after hours event? Probably. We like riding the rides. No lines was dope. If the weather had been better, it would have been 100% worth it with the parade and shows. Disney nor us can predict or control that but stinks we totally missed out. Honestly, the four hours FLEW. We wished it went until 3AM.
I do think there is a way we could have done all we wanted big but it would have taken some crafty planning ahead of time and willing to give up duping and tripling some rides... still don't know if we'd have time to boogie at the dance party tho. Hence the 3AM comment. Need more time!
I grabbed a bunch of extra cookies cause they were so soft! Any time I walked past a station I went in and got one. If you wanna make a little magic of your own, and you're into it, we brought in airplane bottles and leveled up our hot chocolates.
Cheers to all y'all's holiday seasons. And if you're going in the coming weeks, may your weather be cloud free!
(Edited to correct the date. Thanks, Uncle Coaster!)