[Christien]

Sounds like we were there at the same time. We were there Dec. 8-15. I too noticed crowds were huge, considering it's considered to be low-season. I've since read that it's quickly becoming high season, because so many people have discovered that taking xmas holidays a few weeks early means few people at the parks.

I do agree about the Mickey xmas party - $50 to stay in the MK a few hours longer, and lines for some rides were still very long - longer than they were when we were there the preceding Thursday night (though Splash Mountain was walk-on, and they were allowing people to stay on and keep riding as long as they wanted). However, I believe you can get into the park for the full day with the xmas party ticket and not use your regular park admission. I picked our tickets up around 4pm and used my xmas party ticket to enter then - I never swiped my park/room/meal card at all that day.

I'm not sure I agree about soaking the guests that badly, though. I can't believe how cheap our trip was. Flights, meal plan, 7-day park admission, cabin at Ft. Wilderness, all taxes was $3600 CDN for 2 adults and 1 child (baby was free of course). We spent maybe $350 cash, including groceries delivered to our cabin for breakfast every morning, plus a 1/2 case of beer, 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of scotch. So all in under $4K for everything for the week. I think that's a pretty awesome deal.

I did notice the rides stopping way more than ever this time - well over 50% of the rides we did stopped for at least a few seconds. We were actually evacuated from Pirates - kind of neat going "backstage", though we did have to sit for 30 minutes. They said it was some kind of medical emergency a few boats up. We all wondered why they didn't just keep the ride going - we all would've been out in 2 or 3 minutes. Thank god we didn't get stuck in small world for that long.... {cold shiver}

edit: but overall we had a fantastically awesome time. I went every year as a kid, and I'm hoping to keep that tradition alive with my kids. 2 years running so far.