I know I'm inundating you with Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party pictures this week, but I feel like I've been waiting for this season of the year for so long and looking forward to all of the pictures I'd be able to take—and admittedly this is only the tip of the iceberg of photographs that I took over the weekend at the party. This one though...it was my holy grail going in. It was so tough to get, too. I was in the greatest spot for it, right at the rope in front of the Christmas tree and flagpole area, looking straight down the middle of Main Street U.S.A. But when the parade finally reached us (it starts in Frontierland and makes its way here), the Cast Members holding the parade banner were right in front of this scene, and I literally had to hold my camera up in the air and shoot over them. You can see them on either lower corner of the shot and I kind of love that the hint of them is still there. It reminds me of how far I had to go to capture this.
The "snow" was falling heavy. These were the first few characters to reach us. And in the background—the hint of our favorite couple arriving on the first float, and of course, the castle through the falling snow.
Shot at 35mm and cropped, 1/160 second, f/2.8, ISO 5000. Light was limited but I embraced the grain from this high ISO.