Mickey's Halloween Party - October 28th, 2011

The Beagle Boys invaded Disneyland during Mickey's Halloween Party on Friday October 28th.

We got to Disneyland right at 4pm to take advantage of the extra 3 hours of park time.

We stopped back in Big Thunder Ranch to check out all the pumpkin carvings they've done since our last visit in September. (I'll post those photos in another thread).

A couple pictures around the ranch and we were ready to do.

All of the sudden, who should appear, but more Beagle Boys! It was Ma Beagle plus a few more Beagle relatives! Awesome!

We went back to Toontown to grab a few photos.

Mickey didn't have a very long line at his house, so we decided to grab a photo with him since we weren't sure if we'd get a chance later in the night.

By then, 7pm had rolled around and the party had started. Halloween music started playing, pumpkins and spiderwebs projected on the ground, and most importantly all the candy stations were open. We stopped for some photos with some villians, Cruella, Jafar and the Evil Queen.

At Big Thunder Ranch, we ran into Jessie. She posed with us for the standard photo, but then wait, she had an idea.

Reach for the sky!

A quick stop in front of the castle for a group photo.

And then we were back on the treat trail. Now regarding treat stations, they were all over the place. There would be one at the beginning of a trail that always had a bit of a line, but after you got through that, there were 3-4 stations behind it that you could almost walk right up to.

Waiting in line.

We did this a lot! We're all annual passholders, so the rides weren't our main reason for being there. We were there for candy, photos, fireworks and the parade.

We're starting to get a good a pretty good haul.

I didn't want to try to take photos of the fireworks. I just wanted to put the camera away and enjoy it. Here's what it looked like in front of the castle though. We were there about 20 minutes ahead of time and were able to get just to the right of the castle. The firework show was great! I was lots of fun seeing Jack Skellington​ projected beside the castle and Zero flying around behind it.

We then met Phineas and Ferb, though while we were waiting in line, we saw a family with awesome costumes Darth Vader of course, but a really good C-3PO who walked and move just like the movie, and also a great R2-D2 costume.

It was our turn, and they were impressed with our candy haul so far.



The parade came next.

When the western section came up, Jessie passed by but then ran back to us and played with us for a while.

Woody had to come grab her and they ran to catch back up.

Apparently the Country Bears were here, even though they'd been kicked out of their home in Critter Country.

Hoping the line for Mickey and Minnie would be short since the fireworks and both parades were over, we headed back to Big Thunder Ranch. The line was still about 30 minutes long, but we decided to wait and just eat some candy while we were in line.

Finally at the front of the line, I handed my camera to the cast member and asked him to take a bunch. He took this quite literally and started snapping photos right away. In the space of a 60 second interaction with the characters he took 50 photos. When we were done he said, "Have fun deleting them."

With 40 minutes left, we were on a quest for candy! We stopped at all the stations we came across. At a few places candy was starting to run out and hadn't been restocked, so they just gave 1-2 pieces. For the most part though, everyone was pretty consistent with the amount of candy they gave (though we did appreciate those cast members who gave bigger handfuls).

Walking through Tomorrowland, the Stormtroopers had a short line, so we grabbed one more quick photo.

As we were walking to the entrance, they announced that the party was over. It was a really fun 5 hours (plus 3 more before that). At the entrance they had a couple more candy stations where they were topping people off with a good size handful of candy.

I was glad they had two trams running at the end of the night. It was nice to only wait one cycle to board.


Here's some of the candy we got.

And what we were feeling like.

So here's the candy my wife and I got. Between the two of us, we filled 3 bags.

Now for the event itself, first off the candy variety was great! Lots and lots of chocolate. We didn't see any off-brand candy in what we brought home. They definitely stepped that up. They were way ahead compared to what we got at Disney World the year. After doing a quick separation on the floor, it's probably 2/3rd chocolate and 1/3 fruity candy.

And the total haul was 27 pounds between the two of us! Plus 55 packs of freeze-dried apples.

For the event itself, $64 was quite a bit to pay for it. We had a great time and loved the parade and fireworks. Plus all the character meet and greets were fun. But the biggest issue we had was how crowded it was. At the beginning lines for treat stations stretched with hundreds of people and had 10 minutes waits just to get to the first place to get candy. Walking around was also slow with the crush of people crowding and stopping in all the major walkways.

So in all, a great party, but not a very good value in my opinion since it was really crowded.

We had fun though!