It's not about the Walking Dead, it is about all the houses and streets being complete garbage for the past two years lol I can't tell you how many streets or spots in houses were bare and without actors, creative ways to scare.
Legit 2013 had some of the worst houses I've ever been in and the streets were the worst I've ever seen at Orlando. It's a shame when Hollywood with less money, has two dudes dressed up as scarecrows on stilts being more effective than the entire "street experience" last year. And that has nothing to do with marketing, that's the people in charge of the event not properly staffing areas and houses, and then not adequately training them.
Even the "good" houses last year blew. AWIL was only good because of the puppets, completely overrated house (if you missed the Wolf cues then you were just in an average house)...Cabin was lacking actors, same for Evil Dead, the other 5 houses sucked.
Staring at me is not scary. Universal needs to hire more enthusiastic actors like they used to and then TRAIN THEM scare technique, provide them with quality makeup, masks and prosthetics as weapons and then let them loose. With that alone, it doesn't matter the IPs or story concepts...the actors will provide the scares, the fun, and make the event better.