Crowds and Special Events at Thanksgiving

[DisneyDreamer]

Hi all, I haven't been on this website for sooo long; I've missed visiting! I'm trying to persuade my family to visit WDW over the Thanksgiving break. Are the crowds awful during that time? What's the best restaurant for a "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner? Are the Christmas decorations/lights up at that time? Thanks in advance for the input!

[Strmchsr]

The crowds are sizable, but not unbearable. Christmas lights are up, but many of the special events (like MVMCP) are put on hold that week. Some of the stuff starts up the weekend after Thanksgiving, especially the Epcot events.

[vamaggie]

We were there this past Thanksgiving (came Weds left Sunday after T'giving). Crowds were there but not too bad. We did not make any ADRs and flew by the seat of our pants but did not have any trouble getting into restaurants we wanted.(can't tell about traditional T'giving dinners--we did Italian that night) We could not do FP+ so we had to get FP the day of--didn't have any problems except at Epcot on Saturday--Soarin, & Test Track were sold out by lunchtime. We entered Space Mtn on T-giving evening with a 60 min wait (didn't know if we were gonna make it back to MK) but it ended up only being about 40 mins. (that was the longest we waited--except for TOT on Saturday but again it was late in the day and DD HAD to ride it!) Getting to the parks early (i.e. before opening) made it much more manageable for us--we even rode Everest 4 times in a row the morning we were at AK. Really did not find the crowds to be a problem at any of the parks and YES , all the holiday decorations were up and BEAUTIFUL!!!! Would go again at T'giving in a second!!!