Well, this past August I had to attend orientation as a transfer student, too. I didn't have to stand in line to meet my professors or anything (and that strikes me as nuts - the logistics of it are just silly), but I did have the speech and mandatory academic advising. A lot of it was academic policy stuff that should be pretty obvious, not to mention everything was covered in the PDF they emailed to us. I'm sure this varies by major (or the college thereof), institution and state and such, but most of it's stuff you could probably find out on your own. 'Course if you aren't the type to do that, it's a nice information session.
The advising session was roughly as useless for me, since I was switching majors and had a fairly obvious set of classes, but without it I had a registration hold, so... My advisor was a young alumnus of my last school (she probably attended and graduated during my four-year long school break), so that was slightly awkward but nothing big in the end.
I imagine this is common for most four-year institutions - most of the ones I looked into required it. If you can help it, you needn't get too worked up about it - it's about like attending a class, really, advisors and professor-meeting shenanigans aside. Helluva lot better than my freshman orientation, which was boring speeches in giant cafeterias and clueless upper classmen dragging you around campus pointing out buildings you'll never do more than walk by again and trying to rally up some 'school spirit'. (And that lasted all damn day as opposed to a bit over an hour).
Anyway, hope it goes well for you.
