As good as Cinematic may be, I think its operating schedule reinforces something I’ve been saying…Disney is a “destination,” Universal is a place to ride rides. The nighttime show isn’t a ride…it’s a nice distraction/capacity add when the park hours allow for it. But in seasons where lines for rides are short or there are distractions (haunted houses, concerts, etc.), it’s not something that’s going to specifically keep guests around. There’s no way Universal would extend their non-HHN September hours just for the purposes of this show, because the majority of guests that go to Universal aren’t there for that.
RE any pushback to this, I’ll say this: Guests tour Universal in the same way they tour a Six Flags, and the ethos of that is everywhere—in-park ads for Express Passes, commitment to adding one ride/year (“season”), the complete disinterest in utilizing show venues, etc. I’d hesitate to compare the operation of Universal to Disney, because they’re two very different corporate philosophies…
* The Walt Disney Company is just as much the parks as it is the movies and TV. The parks are part of the fabric of the company culture, which is about shows, entertainment, etc.
*Comcast is cable…they lucked into a much smaller parks divisions and they’ve learned how to extract max profit out of them. It’s great that they let very talented and enthusiastic people do that (who can go to bat for nighttime shows in the first place), but ultimately the parks are going to be run and operated like a profit center as part of a larger business.