1/1 New Years Eve at Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom NYE Fireworks
Hi everyone!
Last year we stayed home for New Years Eve (which is often my personal preference), but we ventured out in the afternoon to take photos and video around the Walt Disney World parks of the New Year's Eve celebrations.
Our first book is out on Amazon, Christmas at Walt Disney World!
First, we'll back up to December 30th. We went to the last Candlelight Processional and enjoyed a viewing of Illuminations, followed by New Years Eve Magic Kingdom fireworks as viewed from Disney's Polynesian Resort.
On December 30th, there was already "Happy New Year" projections on the monorail station at Epcot:
We haven't posted Christmas photos at the Polynesian Resort, but I always enjoy the garland wrapped around the Tiki display necks:
The Polynesian Resort is a great place to see the fireworks from. The music is piped in, though the words were a little off (you can hear that in our video). There is 180 degree fireworks, along with a countdown. I generally prefer to be outside of the Magic Kingdom for huge fireworks presentations, one of the last times I was there (for the 4th of July a couple of years back), I got kicked hard in the face by a young child in the arms of his mother!
On New Year's Eve day, we parked at Disney's Hollywood Studios. That was where we were ending up, and it's an easy walk back and forth from Epcot. I read comments online that some guests waited 2-3 hours to get out of Epcot's parking lot, it took us about 5 minutes at DHS at the end of the night. And like other years, the parking lot area that is used for disabled parking and other parking such as AAA was mostly unused all day long. In the following photos, you can see there wasn't a line to get into the DHS parking lot, and that large area of unused parking that stood nearly empty all day.
On the way to Epcot, we walked one more time through the Boardwalk Resort. We shared photos and video of the Boardwalk gingerbread display over a month ago! I liked this Polar Express gingerbread train that wasn't there previously:
Stitch's Bakery was showing signs of wear even a month ago, as guests tend to peel and pick at anything that isn't fully fenced (and even when sometimes when a display is). We spoke with someone who works at the Grand Floridian gingerbread house, and we were told that they actually send a team in early each morning to fix anything that has been damaged.
The Boardwalk Resort was getting ready to host a dance party:
A bar was being set up nearby:
