Warning - This came out much longer than I expected!
Just back from our quick Christmas trip and we went to the 12/10 party. I'm not sure about crowd size, this being my first party, but it may have been down due to the lower temperature that night. We decided to split line standing duties between my wife and I. I took the character lines, she took the treats. The kids enjoyed riding the rides while dad was waiting in lines and dad enjoyed seeing his kids eyes light up while meeting the 7 Dwarves, Scrooge & Donald, Sandy Claus, and Mickey. We enjoyed all of the cookies and the pretzel. The hot chocolate was very good, but it wasn't very hot and the glasses were a bit on the small side (I know, less waste). We did the 7D and Scrooge immediately (I got in line for 7D at 4:30 and was 3rd in line). The time in line passed quickly because of some friendly and talkative people around me who had no issues with letting the kids and my wife in line once it was closer to the meeting time. We found some food and a place in the garden/hub area to watch the shows and planted ourselves down for a rest. We watched the castle lighting show and then Mickey's show, then because of the massive crush of people lining the streets for the parade, we called an audible and went to meet Sandy, with only about a 20 minute wait. After Sandy, we went back to the same Hub/garden area to grab a spot for the fireworks.
RANT
The fireworks were great with the music, but seriously, how hard would it be for everyone to just SIT DOWN! If we all just agree to sit down for 15 minutes, everyone would have a wonderful view of both the castle and the fireworks no matter what the show is.
/RANT
After the fireworks, we made our way back to Frontierland, grabbed some nachos from Pecos Bills and were gifted with some very hot, very large, free hot chocolates that they were handing out to random people who were purchasing food in PB. We parked ourselves on the nice elevated curb near PB and enjoyed the food and the atmosphere. The Country Bears were wandering around, joking with people and we also received a personalized serenade from the Reindeer Wranglers, who picked my wife's favorite Alabama song to parody. The time flew by and it was quickly time for the parade to start. I know people love to watch the parade on Main Street with the snow, but if you're looking to "plus" the parade, I would recommend watching the 2nd one in Frontierland. There were very few people there and we were singled out 6-8 times throughout the parade because we were wearing matching shirts and Santa hats. My youngest enjoys blowing kisses to the various characters and almost every one of them was able to see him doing so and respond in kind, because of the lack of people along that part of the route. My oldest fell in love with the Toy Soldiers and marveled that they were able to march and play instruments inside of those suits. I enjoy a good parade and that is a great one! We hustled over to Jingle Cruise after that, hopped on a boat with no wait, and finished off the night with a Mickey M&G. We could definitely have crammed a couple more things in, but the kids were shot at that point. They were such troopers, they even indulged us with some pictures in the GF lobby when we arrived there and NOBODY was around (1am?).
All in all, it was a wonderful evening and we felt like we got our value from the experience.