RD strategy at USF and IOA for Dec 11 and 12

We are going to be at the USF and IOA on December 11th and 12th. We are staying off property. I know the park opening for off site quests is 9 A.M. When should we be in line at the entrance gates?

@Skubersky is the expert on this topic (so I tagged him). I would expect crowds to be relatively light on the days you’re going though, especially the Thursday. We arrived at USF at 8:40 last year on a low crowd day and the line was only 6 deep (keep in mind thats when early entry was at IOA). I’d bet IOA is that same way now that USF is the early entry park.

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Those days will be a 2, same as today. I got to USF this morning 10 min before early entry and walked into Gringotts with no wait. When I left Diagon at 10am the wait was still only 15 minutes.

Rule of thumb: multiply the crowd calendar score by 5, then arrive that many minutes before opening.

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Nice rule! Would you do the same for WDW, or is this just a UOR thing?

It’s just my personal way of estimating, and seems to work at WDW. You may have to adjust a little depending on the park.

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Btw this assumes you already have tickets, add an extra 15 if you need to purchase.

Thanks for that info! We will follow that rule of thumb in two weeks when we are there too. I’m a little nervous that the crowds might be bigger than predicted as RPR is showing as sold out. But express passes should make it great anyway with three days onsite.

Don’t be too worried about RPR being sold out. The big driver of park attendance is off-site guests and locals. Because of all the off-season deals that they offer, I would not be surprised if they are not at or close to capacity all year round.

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Could you please tell me what RPR is. Just can’t figure that one out…Thanks!

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