Like JerseyDad says, there are two showings of Illuminations on NYE.

There's the "regular" 9:00 show.

Then the NYE version, which we saw back in...2009/10, I think it was.

An extended show of the regular Illuminations, and then a special "countdown" around the countries in the order that the new year is celebrated. It actually wasn't bad as far as crowds (number of people), but, yeah, people *were* grabbing spots as early as 6:00pm.

We got our spot right on the lagoon down by the water between France and the UK around 7:30pm. One of us would do food/drink runs, chatted with the people around us, and enjoyed the show

*HOWEVER*, I *think* that NYE is THE one time during the year that Studios does their "Sorcery in the Sky" fireworks (which used to be a nightly occurrence in the early to mid 1990s). Regrettably, I have *never* caught SitS at Studios.