Halloween Horror Nights 33 (UOR) - News & Information

[Tobias]

It doesn’t matter what the IPs are, it’s all about execution. Most of the year, y’all scoffed at Ghostbusters and Insidious - and the overall consensus are very positive for how they turned out.

Agreed, and for me both Insidious and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire are not only really well done, but I think they're some of the best IP houses we've had in the past several years. Better than a lot of the big headlining IP's the event has had recently, too.

 

[Lucky Planet]

It doesn’t matter what the IPs are, it’s all about execution. Most of the year, y’all scoffed at Ghostbusters and Insidious - and the overall consensus are very positive for how they turned out.

Some years are gonna hit and some aren’t.

Agreed, and for me both Insidious and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire are not only really well done, but I think they're some of the best IP houses we've had in the past several years. Better than a lot of the big headlining IP's the event has had recently, too.

yeah that's a good point, I understand , I guess I meant that I hope we get other stuff besides blumhouse ( I know blumhouse will be present, specially with wolfman, )
I hope we can get some other classics back like Jason

 

[TheCodeMan95]

It's funny you say this, because I saw tweets decrying how crowded it was. Bad luck on their part in terms of crowd patterns, I'm guessing.

Crowd patterns resort wide were weird 9/4-9/9. 9/5 and 9/6 were very dead during the day and very manageable during the event, with 9/6 of course being more crowded. The daytime parks were busier over the weekend, naturally, and the event was packed on 9/7. (9/8 was a fluke, I think, thanks to the monsoon.)

9/9, though, a Monday, was shockingly busy. Even ET had a 40 minute queue (actual ~20) with all three preshow lanes open and both loading stations.

Can confirm - we were there 9/2 to 9/9. I was genuinely shocked at how few people were in the Insidious holding area on 9/5.

Can also confirm - yes, 9/9 was crazy. Busiest day of our trip, possibly even busier than our arrival day (LABOR DAY). ET and Mummy also had significant downtime that day, so that also didn't help matters.

It doesn’t matter what the IPs are, it’s all about execution. Most of the year, y’all scoffed at Ghostbusters and Insidious - and the overall consensus are very positive for how they turned out.

Some years are gonna hit and some aren’t.

For sure. Frozen Empire was at the absolute bottom of my hype list, and it ended up 7th on my ranking - above others that I had higher on my hype list.

Poltergeist is arguably my favorite IP house ever - and while I like the movie, I never would have expected that.

 

[vgp]

Uni and Disney hit a price ceiling a while ago and have pushed right through it. It’s not a secret anymore - major press outlets have been covering the story for a while. The only question is how painful it has to get for both guests and resorts before the corporate decision makers respond. There’s a point of no return looming…

UO and WDW (especially UO) are running the most aggressive promotional offers they've run for a while, especially for the local market. It's quite a bit cheaper to buy an HHN ticket right now than it was at the same time last year, and if there was a price-related exodus then we'd likely see really high crowds at SeaWorld/Howl with their fun cards and flash sales, which doesn't appear to be the case.

I think people have just collectively decided they'd rather do something else this year than theme parks, to put it reductively.

 

[Parkscope Joe]

Maybe, just maybe, it's due to the weird location of Labor Day this year.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

Maybe, just maybe, it's due to the weird location of Labor Day this year.

Labor Day doesn't explain lower attendance for the entire event. Labor Day weekend was busy, just like the past 2 years since HHN has started that early. However, last 2 years we saw decent crowds afterwards (this week will be the ultimate tell with RoF expiring).

UO and WDW (especially UO) are running the most aggressive promotional offers they've run for a while, especially for the local market. It's quite a bit cheaper to buy an HHN ticket right now than it was at the same time last year, and if there was a price-related exodus then we'd likely see really high crowds at SeaWorld/Howl with their fun cards and flash sales, which doesn't appear to be the case.

I think people have just collectively decided they'd rather do something else this year than theme parks, to put it reductively.

Yes - people are starting to pushback that the parks aren't as much as a value as the parks previously thought. HHN is still a tremendous value, they just need to fix their capacity issues.

I know I'm speaking anecdotally, but waits this year are decent. Lots of exaggeration and the lines are moving far quicker than previous years with less DAS/Express use.

 

[Brian G.]

Back in July, Legacy posted

"I had been told that Torture Faire and Swamp (at a minimum) were somewhat late adjustments resulting from Entertainment and A&D’s focus on fixing the parade. A lot of resources (time and money) got adjusted to the daytime entertainment. So “simpler,” less high-level concepts were decided on instead of the originally rumored zones that required a LOT of meticulous scenic (Toys / Latin)."

Someone brought that matter up a few days later and you seemed to confirm key elements of the post:



I'm sorry if I misunderstood.

Issues with houses like Triplets and Bloodlines seem like they can be laid at the feet of the design team (and, to be fair, there don't seem to be more such issues then in previous years). But the streets and ancillary elements do have a palpable feeling of suffering from unusual financial constraints.

You skipped over the part where I said what Legacy said wasn't the case...

Adjustments happen to all scarezones. Yes, adjustments were made due to the parade, not because anything was over budget. HHN gets its budget and that's it - regardless of how any other project is going. The only outright changes were to SF and Hollywood because of a change of plans - not money.

Again, sometimes years just don't hit.

 

[Casper Gutman]

You skipped over the part where I said what Legacy said wasn't the case...

Adjustments happen to all scarezones. Yes, adjustments were made due to the parade, not because anything was over budget. HHN gets its budget and that's it - regardless of how any other project is going. The only outright changes were to SF and Hollywood because of a change of plans - not money.

Again, sometimes years just don't hit.

I quoted the entirety of your post. I see that earlier you disagreed with Legacy about the “last minute” nature of the zones.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

You skipped over the part where I said what Legacy said wasn't the case...

Adjustments happen to all scarezones. Yes, adjustments were made due to the parade, not because anything was over budget. HHN gets its budget and that's it - regardless of how any other project is going. The only outright changes were to SF and Hollywood because of a change of plans - not money.

Again, sometimes years just don't hit.

Was there ever any kind of indication of what the initial plans for SF and Hollywood were?

 

[Brian G.]

Was there ever any kind of indication of what the initial plans for SF and Hollywood were?

Well you know I can’t outright answer that. Lol

 

[Jake S]

Boy, hard to believe this zone was a backup plan.

 

[ReelJustice]

Boy, hard to believe this zone was a backup plan.

Brother, they have been planning Sinister and Surreal for TEN YEARS.

 

[Wesker69]

Well you know I can’t outright answer that. Lol

How many blinky cup cocktails, twisted tators, walking tacos, and/or pizza fries would it require??

 

[Legacy]

Brother, they have been planning Sinister and Surreal for TEN YEARS.

Just those two… the other queens, though…

 

[HHN Maddux]

Brother, they have been planning Sinister and Surreal for TEN YEARS.

Wait, have they actually?