I would normally have booked that week, but I was unhappy about the direction Universal has been with so much 'temporarily' cancelled entertainment, so I had already made the decision to not go. It's a real shame since the previous Universal mgt. had made Universal Holidays into a better event than WDW's Holidays. But my main problem is that they took forever to announce when the event begins. I suspect they always knew, since about six months ago Joe mentioned on either here or Touring Plans, that the event was going to start on Nov. 17 or 18th. So someone must have told him. At that time, I just thought he had bad info, but that surely wasn't the case. Previous years, Universal always announced Holiday dates many months before, and even announced special hotel packages. But by not announcing, and tourists anticipating a normal two weeks before Thanksgiving start, they were able to still get hotel bookings that they probably wouldn't have gotten if they would have had a later start announcement during the summer. This almost sounds intentional, though of course there's no proof. Bottom line though, whatever really happened behind the scenes, this is a really bad look, and has upset guests that booked with the belief it would begin around the same time it normally does....Interestingly, MK changes their Halloween decorations to Holiday overnight. Most houses are off the normal guest areas at Universal Studios. While they have a bit more than MK with the scare zones in the guest areas of the park, it's not all that much more. And IOA, that has no HHN, except for the one store, could easily have a jumpstart with the Christmas decorations.
www.insideuniversal.net
