i was there roughly the same time- 12/26 to 1/1. We did 7 park days, going to parks on arrival and departure day.
I, too, was suprised at how much we were able to do/ride with the parks so busy. We bought genie+ at MK, DHS, and EP for one day each, and returned a 2nd time to ‘clean up’ whatever we didnt do on our first intense day.
My kids are older so we usually did full open to close on the first day and then an easier late arrival day.
all in all a great trip!
d
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I definitely had our first Magic Kingdom day planned out to go from rope drop to fireworks. But after seeing how things went earlier in the trip, I knew our boys wouldn’t like Space Mountain, and I couldn’t convince one of them to go on Haunted Mansion, so that scratched two of the longer waits (or later G+ return times) from our day.
We only used G+ for JC, BTMRR, Buzz, and TS (I might have grabbed one for Monsters, which wasn’t really necessary but available), which definitely saved some time, but I think we still could have knocked those out even without G+. Peoplemover was one of the longer waits, which was pretty crazy. 
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Of course that being said, adding up the SB times for JC, BTMRR, Buzz, and TS would have probably cost us another 3.5 to 4 hours, so I think we still made the right choice. 
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I really enjoyed your trip report. Thank you for sharing. Glad you had such a great experience, and I loved all of the pictures. You have a beautiful family.
My son was 9 the first time we visited WDW. We come from Seattle, so it’s a very long flight, and we take fewer, longer trips. We went again when he was 17.
We are currently planning a trip for 2024 when he will be 22.
I totally agree with you about bringing food and eating it while you’re waiting to be let in. We got protein shakes, and it held us over until our lunch reservations. We tended to have lunch reservations every day (a couple of times we did breakfast/dinner combo), because it got us out of the heat in the middle of the day and gave us a chance to rest.
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