Halloween and Christmas

[Scotty]

I'm back and ready to plan our next trip.
We want to incorporate both Halloween and Christmas 2021 without actually being in MNSSHP on Halloween itself.

What are the best dates to go? Looking at 14/15 nights and can travel any day of the week.

[sky13]

I was there Oct/Nov last year for 2 weeks, got to do both MNSSHP and MVMCP.

Arrived a few days before Halloween and there were I think 3 MNSSHP parties I could have done (including 31 Oct and 1 Nov). Then the first MVMCP was on 8 Nov Friday. During that time, Halloween season was in full swing (mainly in MK), and then over the 2/3 Nov weekend MK got very quickly transformed into Christmas mode. DHS and AK also went into Christmas mode and were in full swing by 8 Nov with Jingle Bell Jingle Bam and other Christmas festivities. Epcot was in Food and Wine mode most of that time, and hadn't quite gotten into Christmas yet by the time I left (10 Nov) - I don't remember seeing the Christmas tree set up yet. I think Festival of the Holidays only starts around Thanksgiving at Epcot. Disney Springs Christmas tree trail opened around that time too (8 Nov I think). At that time, the Contemporary gingerbread house was also up and running and selling treats, while the Grand Floridian gingerbread house was still being constructed (as were some of the other resorts).

I think in general if you go before Halloween, you will be able to catch most of Halloween. And if you are still there around early November, you might be able to catch the start of Christmas (I think it was 8 Nov that most Christmas things were up and running last year). But there might still be Christmas things that only start later in November, like all the gingerbread houses and Festival of the Holidays, so you might still miss those.

Be aware that early November is also the Wine and Dine half marathon weekend so you might run into lots of runners there! And also potentially some road closures early in the morning (should not affect most parkgoers though as they do try to open back the roads as soon as they can).

[Scotty]

Thanks, I know we are not going to get full blown Christmas but DS GF would like to see the Halloween stuff so we compromised and said we would do that as long as I could catch some of the Christmas stuff as well.
I was thinking if we went out the 28/29th we should be ok.
We generally are there over Princess run weekend so used to seeing all the runners. Might even give it a go.
Only problem is the flight prices as I assume its the English school holiday around then.

[JudgeJ26]

This is what we have planned for next year too, as we wanted to do both Halloween and Christmas. We fly out in the 25 Oct and return on 15 Nov. We plan on doing both HHN and MNSSHP but Christmas wise we just want to see the decorations. I'm lucky where I work in that we can use all our holiday in one go if we want.