While Santa Claus readily makes an appearance at malls in just about every town across the country, if you want to take your holiday photos with The Grinch, Universal’s resorts are really the only place to do so. And with Christmas Day just days away, Universal Orlando is facing an insane influx of fans getting in line to meet and greet that makes Disney World’s Christmas extended wait times look like nothing.
On Friday morning, we looked on Universal Orlando Resort’s app, and we were absolutely stunned at the posted wait times for The Grinch meet and greet at Universal’s Islands of Adventure. It’s a wait time that’s so wild it could even cause someone to see their heart grow three sizes smaller. Take a look:
Just to do some simple math here, the wait time to meet The Grinch today was SEVEN HOURS. Seven hours. Let that sink in. If true, and one actually did wait seven hours to see the mean and green one, that’s over half of the hours the park is open that day. When I checked a few hours later from that screenshot the app read “At Capacity” regarding the wait time instead. As it seems, The Grinch is more popular than ever, and a lot of people are committing to those Grinch holiday cards this season.
Christmas At Universal Orlando And Universal Studios Hollywood: A Full Rundown Of The Holiday Season
The Grinch meet and greet is part of the park’s “Grinchmas” event that started on November 17 this year and will conclude on New Year’s Eve, December 31. Alongside the grumpy green guy being a particularly popular character encounter right now, there’s also the “Grinchmas Who-liday Spectacular” which presents a live performance version of the Grinch story including the likes of Cindy-Lou Who, who is also available to meet as well. It’s also the best time of year to venture to the Wizarding World for its holiday celebration.
Elsewhere in the park, the Jurassic World VelociCoaster has a current wait time of 135 minutes, AKA over two hours. Universal Orlando’s holiday wait times are definitely exceeding that of Walt Disney World this year. We checked the current times at the fellow Orlando, Florida park and the longest wait time posted is for Animal Kingdom’s Avatar Flight of Passage at 120 minutes. It comes very close to Universal, but it doesn’t top the insanity of Christmas time at the resort the Friday before Christmas.
Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando recently both raised their prices as the companies getting ready to expand their attractions across the world. Universal is currently hard at work on finishing its Epic Universe theme park, a year-round horror attraction in Las Vegas and a kids resort in Frisco, Texas alongside reports of it planning another theme park project in Europe.
Now, if you’re feeling like a Grinch upon hearing about these wild wait times, you can always watch one of the Grinch movies at home alongside so many of the best Christmas movies of all time as Xmas day approaches.
