These are completely valid takes. This past year myself, I honestly didn't have solid thoughts on the event until my 3rd or 4th night going, and because of it, I didn't really post any. I believe any theme park attraction can take some time to actually sink in, especially one as dense as an HHN haunt, and especially when you're experiencing 10 back-to-back-to-back. I still haven't posted everything about my Epic trips, and I also won't look in the House or Zone threads until I experience them for myself, as I'm also really sensitive to spoilers. I completely get this, and it's not what I'm really talking about.
Just to be totally clear; I don't want to come off as whatever the HHN niche hyperfan equivalent of "holier than thou" would be, or imply that any specific poster here has a duty to contribute to 28 pages of deep and thoughtful discussion on Masquerade: Dance with Death. Posting what I did before, I knew that would be a risk, but I do hope that's not the takeaway.
There is just such an outsized difference between the energy of the Spec threads to the confirmed ones. To an exponential level. A spec thread will have 300+ pages across 10 months; close to the same amount the Epic spec thread got across 6 years, and then the Zone of the Year winner Cat Lady of Crooked Lane won't have a single post from July to November.
I totally understand why the difference in energy is there, and it's totally fine to not enjoy reading about these attractions as much once they're open, but that's the energy difference that I'm talking about. There is such a big HHN community here, and there are a number of locals and people that go very consistently that post here too. I'm not expecting Spec thread-level page counts, but I would hope for more discussion than literally nothing for months.