Downtown Disney fireworks short but sweet – but leaving took three hours

I made the mistake of taking my family to Downtown Disney to watch the fireworks last night. The fireworks were set to start at 10:30 p.m., so we arrived around 9:30 p.m. The traffic was a mess, as expected. All of the parking lots were full except for the far one down past the West Side end. So that’s where we parked after about a half-hour of getting around to that side.

The show started on time and was spectacular – for about five minutes, then it was over. We decided to just hang around for about a hour before heading to our car to allow the traffic to clear, or so we thought. We headed to our car around 11:30 p.m. only to see the cars lined up in the parking lot and people standing around outside of their cars, where they had been stuck for the last hour or so.

So we headed back into the West Side to wait it out while enjoying the music at Bongo’s and some pretzels from Wetzel’s. We waited a while, sent someone to check the traffic, waited some more, etc. Around 1 a.m. we decided to just go out to our car and see if we could get out. To our surprise, the cars that had been there since 11 p.m. were still in the same exact spot. People started honking their horns out of frustration. It sounded like Times Square. I walked around the parking lot a bit, trying to see if there was an accident or what the problem was. Others were wandering, sleeping in their cars, having a mini party on the asphalt, and of course yelling at each other.

The traffic finally started moving in our lot around 1:30 a.m. I never did hear if there was an accident or what happened, if anything. Some people were saying there was an accident, others were saying it was just that two huge parking lots were trying to merge into one exit and that this happens every year. Does anyone know? Was there a wreck? Have you ever been stuck at Downtown Disney?

So I had four hours of waiting for a five-minute fireworks show. Others had been there longer to get a good spot to watch. At least I got some good pictures out of it. I took these pictures from the walkway from the West Side to Saratoga Springs. More pictures below …