I've been a few times the last few years, but I've never booked a photo season. In the past, when you book you get an email confirmation with an attached PDF. Just print that out before you go and the bar code on that gets scanned on the way in. Nice quick entry.
If you want any autographs, especially of anyone popular, get the early ticket and NOT the after 11am entry ticket. The autographs works on a virtual queuing system. What that means is you go to each of the signing desks of the actors as soon as you get in and at each desk a member of staff will give you a numbered ticket for each. To keep the queues down to about 20 at a time, they only let people join a queue if you have a correct numbered ticket in the range they're asking for. For example, if you have ticket number 130, the member of staff will only let people with ticket numbers 1-30 to join at the start. If your outside that range, they tell you to go away. After a time, they will extend that from 1-50 and then 1-100 and then 1-150 and so on throughout the day. The speed of the queue depends on how quick the actor signs and if they have any talks, photo seasons, etc., to go to as well. So it's always best to go straight in, walk straight past the trade stands, etc. and get the lowest ticket number possible. If you get there late, you'll get a high ticket number and they may not even get to that number range on the day. This also means once you've got your numbered tickets, you can go off and do other things and come back later in the day for your autographs, joining a short queue. This system works very well. I usually aim to arrive at least an hour before the doors open, to get early enough to get low ticket numbers. Even an hour before, you find there will be a decent size queue forming. So arrive as early as you can.
The spring event will be less busy and if you're planning on attending both events, then you can use the spring event as a trial run and get an idea of how it works and thus be better prepared for the summer event. The summer event tends to more busy and have the bigger actors. Anymore questions, then just ask.