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2019 Holidays at Universal Orlando

The Holiday's at Universal Orlando have announced their dates, beginning from November 16th to January 5th.



Christmas in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Universal's Holiday Parade featuring Macy’s, and all of the Grinchmas offerings also returns.

Great news with the early start date. I thought it would be later since Thanksgiving is a late date this year. My Nov. vacation is primarily at Disney, but my last 4 nights will be Universal on site(exact hotel to be determined), so I'll be able to catch all the Christmas stuff, which like HHN, is where Universal really shines now.
 
Glad you posted this since they changed the locations of the Turkey Holiday dinner from the Potter restaurants to Monsters & JP Thunder Falls. I had that dinner last year and it greatly exceeded my expectations. I would rate it as perhaps the best meal I've experienced in the Universal parks since I've been going there, and that includes the sit down in park restaurants. Definitely getting that again on my upcoming trip.
 
I’m going to be in the parks on the day of one of the concerts. How crazy will the crowds be?
get to the concert area about 45 minutes before the show starts to get a good spot.....or....you can get there late, and try to squeeze into an aisle space, and sit in the aisle....The concerts are excellent.
 
get to the concert area about 45 minutes before the show starts to get a good spot.....or....you can get there late, and try to squeeze into an aisle space, and sit in the aisle....The concerts are excellent.
Awesome thanks! Are the parks busier than usual for the rest of the day?
 
Awesome thanks! Are the parks busier than usual for the rest of the day?
Depends when you go probably. We were there during the first week or two in December. Lines weren't too bad for the rides even on Concert days. But the concert area did fill up way past Transformers..... & the new Macy's parade, which is great, gets big crowds. Get a spot on the curb in front of Macy's about 30 minutes before the start. They do show scenes there and the huge tree is right across from you. Plus snow falls from those NYC rooftops. Excellent ambiance. Good photo spot.....What's also cool is that at various parts of the day they'll have a huge HS or college band march through the streets of NY & Hollywood. The Studios park is very holiday oriented. Lots of Christmas music. and the Blues Brothers Christmas show is priceless....But hands down, the most immersive holiday area in the park is Seuss Landing. Lots of Xmass Seuss holiday streetmoshere characters that come out in mass about every 30 to 45 minutes. And the new Grinchmas show is fabulous.....and the Hogwarts Christmas projection show is very good, much better, and a bit longer, than the regular Hogwarts show. It runs every 20 minutes or so once it gets dark.
 
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My favorite must do ride, when the Christmas lights are up at Suess Land, is the The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train after dawn. It looks amazing.
The castle projection show is beautiful and in Diagon I love the festive songs from Celestina Warbeck and the Banshees. The Studios is the most decorated of any park I know, great time to visit (especially the first 2 weeks for December).
 
My favorite must do ride, when the Christmas lights are up at Suess Land, is the The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train after dawn. It looks amazing.
The castle projection show is beautiful and in Diagon I love the festive songs from Celestina Warbeck and the Banshees. The Studios is the most decorated of any park I know, great time to visit (especially the first 2 weeks for December).
Ditto on the Seuss Trolley in the night lights. The ride is multiple times better than the daylight version. The lit up ride scenes just jump out at you, plus the IOA land's lights in the distance and the journey through Seuss Landing in all it's Christmas grandeur. It's one of the best kept secrets in the park. I bet most guests don't realize how good it is in the night and pass it up.
 
We didn't come across anything new at Uiversal that wasn't there last year, holiday wise. Basically the same impressive lineup they debuted last year & the year before. But it did seem they had a significant number of cast changes for Grinchmas. We saw three shows, all excellent as usual. We got lucky and experienced two shows with a new narrator, that is 40 or 50 ish in age, which is a key role. He was tremendous, worthy of a major Broadway performance. What a great voice. Great Grinches too. And two of the shows had an amazing Max who did more than the usual minimal Max dog scenes. He actually stole the last scene with his on queue barking and front of the side stage moves......We just had a short 3 and a half days at Universal after 7 days at Disney, but it really seems Universal is more into the holiday season with decorations and music throughout the parks and hotels than Disney was. Main Street & the Castle at MK was excellent as usual but the rest of WDW was nice, but not great, holiday wise. The Tree of Life had a few really good, but short, night Xmas projection shows......The peppermint stick slushy at Universal was pretty damn good too. And this year we stayed at CBBR and really enjoyed the retro 1960's aluminum trees and decorations. Brought back a lot of childhood memories.......Not a Holiday thing but it appears they made some changes to the Cinemagic lagoon show again, mostly pacing. The May 2019 shows we saw were different than the Dec. 2018 shows. Again in November the pacing, and some content, was different, mostly now the fireworks are in a pretty significant Fireworks Grand Finale, whereas before the fireworks were more spread out throughout the show. That made for a really nice ending fireworks display.
 
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