Holiday, Potter, and Jaws Questions for trip this weekend

[v_gan]

I have a few questions regarding a last-minute trip I'm planning for this upcoming weekend, Dec. 9-11. Current plans:

December 9 - Arriving at night, will go to City Walk and pick up tickets for the following day.
December 10 - Islands of Adventure (9 am - 8 pm)
December 11 - Universal Studios (9 am - 7 pm)

Questions:

1. Does anyone know how long the Mannheim Steamroller concert and Macy's parade last?

2. Are set times for the Grinchmas show and Grinch meet and greet available yet? Is it preferable to see the first or last Grinch show of the day, crowd-wise?

3. How awful will it be not having early entry into WWOHP? This will be my first time since it opened, and I'm pretty worried about this.

4. Will it still be a good idea to do Ollivander's first if I won't have early entry? We'll probably be at the gates by 8:15 or so. If not early, then how are crowds for the show within the last hour the park is open? Does Ollivander's stay open until then?

5. In Amity, do they still have those cute shark plushes in Amity Island hoodies available as prizes for some of the games? I seem to remember them being offered as prizes for games in Toon Lagoon on my last trip, as well.

6. Is Jaws still opening after the official park opening time? If so, what time? 10:00?

 

[macraven]

i'll try for question #3........

first, check out potter and see how the crowds are when you get there.

if they are horrible, meaning one hour wait for fj, and the shops are packed,
go back about one and a half hours before the park closes.

from what i know, the parks should not be too bad crowd wise early december.
you might luck out and not have issues of long waits for somethings.

you are going on a friday, saturday, sunday.....

saturday will have its crowds.
if there is a concert that night, and i thought there was one scheduled, the studios will be crowded.
ioa might be better to hit that evening then.

friday might be a bust.......but try in the evening anyhow.

sunday might be the best day for doing potter in the morning.
for some reason, away from the holiday periods, sundays have been reported to have decent managable crowds.

 

[v_gan]

Our main reason for this last-minute trip is Jaws, so I'm keeping Sunday as our Universal day and hoping for low crowds and plenty of chances to say goodbye to the big guy. Saturday also gives an extra hour at IOA, and we're not visiting parks on Friday since we're arriving in Orlando after parks are closed. We also don't have park-to-park tickets.

We'll definitely be visiting Potter first thing in the morning and about 1.5 hours before park closing, so I'm hoping that will be sufficient. Still wondering about Ollivander's at night, though, and if we should just not worry about it until then.

 

[damo]

December is usually quite light until right before Christmas. However, this whole Jaws thing might throw in a monkey wrench into that norm.

 

[buckeev]

I believe the Macy's parade at US is 20 minutes long. (But to obtain a "prime viewing spot", get there about 20-30 minutes earlier.)

 

[Babbletrish]

The weirdest thing about #4 is that when we were at WWOHP last week, the line for Ollivander's exceeded those of Dueling Dragons*, Hippogryph, and Forbidden Journey combined!

* - I know. The old name is better.

 

[Tink415]

The weirdest thing about #4 is that when we were at WWOHP last week, the line for Ollivander's exceeded those of Dueling Dragons*, Hippogryph, and Forbidden Journey combined!

* - I know. The old name is better.

Yes! We went on FJ 3 times Sunday and then couldn't bring ourselves to get in the long long line for Ollivander's. The TM at the head of the line did suggest we came back an hour before closing for a shorter line. I might do Ollivander's first next time as there is nothing interesting in that line while FP queue has lots of interesting things to look at.