New Year's at Disney--Need help!

[AuntDJ]

So my friend and I have just decided to take and adult trip to Disney for New Years! I am soooo excited!

I know the parks fill up and close up to new patrons, but for those that have been December 30 & 31 what is your advise?

Do we have to be in a park to enjoy the fireworks?

Anything you guys have i will take!

Thanks
Dj

[Beast_fanatic]

I haven't been at that time, but the period between Christmas and New Year's is the most crowded time of the year.

It is possible to enjoy fireworks from other locations outside the parks, but on special occasions, they usually restrict access to some of these locations to guests of that particular resort (like the Poly beach is only open to Poly resort guests on special occasions). And, at this point, it would be highly unlikely to be able to get a ressie at any of the resort restaurants that offer a view of Wishes.

Hopefully someone else will be along soon with firsthand experience to help!

[McCloytrio]

This past year we were at MK on Dec 30th & at 11:59 they did a countdown to new years eve and they did a pre-New Years Eve fireworks show. They did the same show that they did on New Year's Eve. Fireworks were going off over the castle, over the train station, behind main street and at each land. It was awesome. I didn't know where to look. That Saturday night (12/30/06) MK stayed open until 3 am. (EMH are great). We spent our New Years Eve at Epcot. We experienced a German New Year, (as well as a few others) we had dining ressies at 5:30 and at 6pm (Florida) it was New Year's in Germany and the cast members all danced, sang and celebrated. Epcot did 2 fireworks shows and the last one started about 11:45 and it went on until way after midnight. One lady said she timed it and Epcot did fireworks for 36 minutes. Epcot had huge parties going on. There were stages set up w/ DJ's. One was playing hip-hop, another had latin/salsa music, another had dance music, one was for the rock/country/top 40. There were party hats, noise makers, bubbles, costumes, dancers etc...we thoroughly enjoyed it.
It was extremely crowded, we got there at 9:30 that morning, we rented a double stroller for our then 7 year old because we knew he'd be exhausted if we stayed all day. We were told that MK had reached full capacity by 10am and shut the gates. Epcot had reached full capacity around 11 that morning.
Good luck and remember wherever you go you will have a blast because you will be at Disney!!!!

[Disneyfun]

For the infamous Y2K New Year's, a buddy and I watched the EPCOT fireworks from the walkway outside the International Gateway near the Beach Resort on the bridge towards the Boardwalk Resort. They may have restricted this access as this was before they really started restricting who could park at the resorts and limiting the time frame you could park there.