My husband and I attended the second night of this year's Mickey's Halloween Treat parties. A lot of it was the same as last year, but there were some new things this year. The major difference was the addition of "Mickey's Trick or Treat on the Street", which is advertised as a "character cavalcade". While not quite a parade, it's closer than they've come the last couple of years. This procession features a number of characters and several "floats", though only one has characters on it. It starts at Paradise Pier an hour before the party ends, and follows the usual parade route along Paradise Bay and past the Golden Screams theater, the Pacific Wharf, and the Golden Vine Winery before ending at Sunshine Plaza. It has three performance stops: in front of the Golden Screams theater, near "a bug's land", and in front of Candy Corn Acres. The performance is about 10 minutes long - Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy sing some Halloween-themed songs, and kids from the audience are invited onto the parade route to dance with the characters and costumed Cast Members.

Also new this year...the pirates have landed and have taken over the Pirate's Wharf area. There's lots of pirate-themed decorations there, including treasure that's guarded by skeletal pirates (which look like they came out of Pirates of the Caribbean!). There's a large craft area - at one point I saw Peter and Wendy interacting with the kids there. There's also some pirate games where the kids can shoot a cannon and win a bookmark and some tatoos. One of the dance areas is there, too.

Something I noticed this year, which I don't think they did in previous years, was that there were a number of characters in the dance areas who were not doing meet and greets, but instead were dancing with the guests. Everyone seemed to enjoy that.

There's still lots of candy available - in the first hour or so lines were long near the entrance to the park but non-existent back in Paradise Pier. Each treat stop had a healthy alternative in addition to candy - there were bags of baby carrots and sliced apples, boxes of raisins, and organic fruit leather. Most of the candy was sweet stuff like Laffy Taffy, Now&Laters, Starburst and lollipops - not a high proportion of chocolate bars this year, much to my disappointment. Though there were several places distributing bags of Kissables.

At the turnstiles were the special Mickey's Halloween Treat guide maps, and CMs handed us a treat bag as we walked in. Though these were smaller than in past years (more the size of a lunch sack or fast food bag) they were heavy plastic and seemed quite sturdy.

In addition to the Treat Trails at Grizzly Peak and Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, there was a new trail inside the Animation Building. The line for this one was quite long and moving slowly so we didn't investigate it, though.

There were more character meet-and-greet locations this year. In addition to Mickey and Minnie, the Princesses, and the Villains, there were Disney characters dressed as pirates Pirate's Wharf and characters from JoJo's Circus in the at Hollywood Backlot area.

Like last year the lines for attractions were short but the waits for some of the attractions were long (like Soarin' and Tower of Terror) because they were running at reduced capacity. It was a little frustrating to wait 25 minutes to ride the Tower of Terror when we walked right into the Lobby to start with!

I think this event keeps getting a little better every year - the "Trick or Treat on the Street" procession was a nice addition, though I'd like to see more of a full-blown parade, especially since the party continues to expand - this year running on 11 nights, up from 9 last year. And I'm still hoping for a Halloween-themed fireworks or laser show.