The Orlando Informer is reporting:
BREAKING: per Universal’s website, Cinematic Celebration has a scheduled 9:45 pm showtime for this Saturday, October 24 – the first time a nighttime spectacular will take place since the parks’ reopening.
(They are scheduled to be open until 10pm)
This is going to be curious to see how they pull it off while being socially distanced. If they can pull it off successfully, then it will definitely add pressure to Disney to think about opening up fireworks in some form as well.
Any word on how this went?
Fine, there was a lack of capacity but the show ran without a hitch.
So, how was it handled?
There were dedicated locations to stand with quite a bit of distance apart, so groups could stand together. Probably a few hundred instead of thousand like normal. Just get there early if you want to be in the viewing area.
There’s another showing scheduled for this Saturday - Oct. 31 / Halloween.
Is this only viewable from inside the park? We arrive 10/31 and while we have “bonus” tickets we can use to enter the park, we planned to just hang at the pool and avoid the Halloween masses. Any chance we could see the display from RPR or another nearby location?
Not most of it. You might catch the top of some fireworks but because Universal is in a neighborhood they don’t do big fireworks like Disney. It’s most low lying ones close to the water shooting out of something on the ground and a water projection show (like Fantasmic and World of Color do).
Universal Orlando (There is some video and a photo…and if you want to see the whole thing I’m sure that’s on Youtube)
Thanks for the info. I’m thinking that’ll be a “next time” item- we’re going to want an early bedtime because early admission the next day is at 7am
Yes, much more worth that short wait for Hagrids (I’d honestly aim to walk to the gates by 6:10-6:15am which means leaving your hotel at 6am). If you do this you’ll be one of the first in line and through Hagrid’s by 7:15am. About 7:50am try and get a Virtual Line ticket for it later in the day. Hagrid’s beats the nighttime show any day imho
So you don’t need a virtual time slot if you jump in line right away during early park access?
Right. During early entry there is no virtual line access. I’m not sure exactly what time they enforce virtual line only but I highly recommend riding during early entry and getting to the park gates 45-50 min before early entry to be at the very front of the line so you can ride again or ride something else with no wait or tour Hogsmeade before it’s crowded.
For comparison, the previous Sat we arrived about 25-30min before early entry and we waited about a hour for Hagrids eating up the entire early entry period. So getting there 15-20 min earlier would have saved us over 50 min of waiting in line for Hagrids.
Wow, thanks so much for this information. Extremely helpful.