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But this is a bit troubling, especially now hearing about poor employee morale. It seemed Universal had
pretty decent employee morale before this year, since they always seemed to treat us tourists very well at the parks & hotels.
I don't think all employee morale is low. If you work at IOA, VB, CityWalk, or are somehow managing to only work daily park hours at USF, you're probably pretty content because things are still fairly normal. It's everyone who has to work until 2am or later and not come in until 5 or so, which means a very odd sleep schedule if you aren't getting home until 4 or 5 am that is being effected the most.
I'm on the ops side of things, so i'm one of the people coming in a 5 or so. They'll schedule you as close to 40 hours as they can, but then they tempt you by offering team members OT or to pull doubles and plenty will do it because the paychecks will be huge at the end of the week (in comparison to what we'd normally get paid, at least), but there are people that are pushing 60-70 hours and are working on pure adrenaline at a certain point. At a certain point I feel like TMs need to be saved from themselves. Going for all the OT you can get sounds great to make for a big paycheck, but at the same time people are burning out trying to get it.
Even way back in 2022, with only 20 some odd nights and only Friday/Saturday 2 am closings, it was emphasized that HHN is a marathon—not a sprint. They wanted you to go 90% effort so you could go longer. Plus side was you always had 3-4 days to recover.
It’s gotten to the point where, if they want more nights, you need more shifts, and that essentially doubles the need
Even way back in 2022, with only 20 some odd nights and only Friday/Saturday 2 am closings, it was emphasized that HHN is a marathon—not a sprint. They wanted you to go 90% effort so you could go longer. Plus side was you always had 3-4 days to recover.
It’s gotten to the point where, if they want more nights, you need more shifts, and that essentially doubles the need
Yeah, they are getting close to doing a 7-night event and if that ever happens they need to cast it like they do for Mardi Gras now. One set of two casts for the first half of the week and then a second set of two casts for the rest of the week, so essentially doubling casting.
This used to be a job people did on the side for fun from school or from their real job. I’ve met lawyers that have done this in the past because they wanted a fun distraction. That’s no longer possible as this is now essentially a full time job that pays minimum wage + OT.
And to address the whole “pace yourself” thing, last time I did it, the stamina coach that they brought in at orientation preached that and told us to start at 70% and build up from there.
Of course then management would yell at us for not going hard enough, so yeah.
I know it's easy to hate Disney leadership/management, but Universal can get complacent too - sometimes more than Disney since they can get away with it.
Prior to the security incident this summer at the garages, they were short staffing the security checkpoint. They pretty much have been on a hiring spree for security guards since then and keeping more metal detectors open.
During last year's HHN, it was justified to have boo holes empty... but not this year. Several house runs this year have had missing actors - not during a cast change. Not sure if Universal is trying to spread the same cast size through 5/6 days, but it isn't working and is affecting the guest experience.
The event is popular enough to probably start running most nights in October now and a 3rd shift/rotation, not just backups, is crucially needed.
Disney's Food & Beverage teams are well-oiled machines when it comes to food stands at Epcot and know how to operate them. In contrast, during HHN opening weekend, I saw a manager approach the ridiculously crowded Meaty Meetz stand and simply moved the queue stanchions a few inches from where they were (didn't do or say anything else but stared) and left.
Creatively, Universal is competing and sometimes beating Disney... but operations at Disney are still king and will continue to be as long as the current Universal ops leadership stands.
Some ideas to help alleviate the problems of HHN:
Dedicated Bar/Lounge Areas - SeaWorld has done a great job since they know drinking is a popular part of halloween haunts. Universal miserably failed this year, so next year they should actually give it a good try.
The Weeknd bar was a lazy attempt at this. Hollywood did a better job. Next year, actually add some more theming/music/lighting/etc. and actual seating. You can easily turn off the music/lights during the lagoon show.
The bar in Lombard's is a good area, but lacks any sort of visual marketing to tell guests what's actually behind there. Next year, make it obvious from the front and add more theming other than just that one random very non-descript large wall.
Transformers Bar - keep it, add something theming. Next year, they'll have the seating capacity with the Minions cafe.
Food Tents - worst offender this year, which sucks since the options are great this year.
They are obviously short-staffed this year, including the quick service locations. The quality of the food this year is great, but the speed at which they operate is mind-boggling ridiculous when Disney can churn guests in a matter of 1-2 minutes during Food & Wine.
There is no reason why they only have 1 person fulfilling orders when they have 2-4 cashiers taking orders.
They have also got to add seating/tables for you to enjoy your snack at, rather than worrying about dropping it.
Always had the idea that they should create these well-themed "HHN Festival Centers" with proper theming, food tents, and several photo ops. I would put these under the Animal Actors canopy, Delancey Street, and Battery Park.
Yeah, they are getting close to doing a 7-night event and if that ever happens they need to cast it like they do for Mardi Gras now. One set of two casts for the first half of the week and then a second set of two casts for the rest of the week, so essentially doubling casting.
This used to be a job people did on the side for fun from school or from their real job. I’ve met lawyers that have done this in the past because they wanted a fun distraction. That’s no longer possible as this is now essentially a full time job that pays minimum wage + OT.
And to address the whole “pace yourself” thing, last time I did it, the stamina coach that they brought in at orientation preached that and told us to start at 70% and build up from there.
Of course then management would yell at us for not going hard enough, so yeah.
In September this year they started hiring scareactors that could work a minimum of two days which is a first I’ve seen. I remember back in 2020 there ended up being eight separate casts working for Bride and Tooth individually (they needed that many for four casts to cover every day). Thinking about the logistics of casting a nonstop two month event would be crazy but not impossible I think.
In September this year they started hiring scareactors that could work a minimum of two days which is a first I’ve seen. I remember back in 2020 there ended up being eight separate casts working for Bride and Tooth individually (they needed that many for four casts to cover every day). Thinking about the logistics of casting a nonstop two month event would be crazy but not impossible I think.
I think it would be close to impossible simply because of market saturation.
Simply put, the majority of people who audition for HHN get cast. It’s not exactly stringent. That means you have to drastically increase the auditioning pool in order to double the cast size to nightly. And if the auditioning pool just isn’t there, you’re stuck.
I just can't see a seven-night-a-week working. You'd be closing the Studios to non-HHN guests at 5 every single day for two months. As someone who sometimes spends a week at Uni after doing HHN, limiting the Studios in that way would be infuriating (having it close at 5 5 nights a week is already an annoyance). Knowledgeable folks insist that it is impossible that HHN will ever utilize any part of IOA again. Essentially making the Studios a full-time HHN park for two months while ignoring day guests also seems impossible. At this point, HHN is so big something impossible is going to have to happen.
On an unrelated note, with much of the backstage infrastructure set to move to EU, Uni really needs to start installing more permanent spaces for HHN, specifically at least one "festival center," which, of course, can also be used for Christmas and Mardi Gras. As special-event-dependent as the Studios have become, it seems like a real oversight that this hasn't been done yet.
I actually see the opposite happening inside the houses. Seems like the ops don't have to interfere as much anymore since people are walking at a pretty steady pace. There was only one instance (during a cast change) where it felt like a normal crawling conga line.
The problem with Bugs is that it's the go-to house after Nightmare Fuel and sounds much more appealing/scary than the name Descendants of Destruction. The instant crush of several 100 people arriving at the house cause it to go back up easily.
I actually see the opposite happening inside the houses. Seems like the ops don't have to interfere as much anymore since people are walking at a pretty steady pace. There was only one instance (during a cast change) where it felt like a normal crawling conga line.
The problem with Bugs is that it's the go-to house after Nightmare Fuel and sounds much more appealing/scary than the name Descendants of Destruction. The instant crush of several 100 people arriving at the house cause it to go back up easily.
I also think that the placement of the express merge point has something to do with it as well. That thing seems much closer to the house entrance than most others.
I also think that the placement of the express merge point has something to do with it as well. That thing seems much closer to the house entrance than most others.
One night last month the fulfillment line stretched back into the cashiers. There was nowhere to go; the person who had just finished paying for their order could not move forward due to the line. The cashier kept yelling at that guest to move forward. I was next in line and refused to move to the cashier, stating that I wanted the line ahead to clear and there was no issues.
Yeah Ops pushing people through the houses from my experience is the opposite of helpful. The people in the houses were moving way faster than normal through the houses without Ops making me step on someone’s heels. Done that so much in the past, I’m happy I haven’t been punched because of ops making us dogpile on each other.
Honestly the issue is outside the houses this year, not in them. As has obviously already been pointed out. Seriously we were moving at a decent pace in the houses and people were still getting ahead of us by a lot. So yeah, I’d say the opposite is true. Ops rushing people through the houses creates bottlenecks, not eliminates them. At least in my experience.
Depends on how you define helpful. For the in-house guest experience, it's obviously not great. But from a numbers perspective, I mentioned it before, but it simply gets much better results.
Could just be me but Express and Standby both seem to move at a snails pace. The last two times I went it took 7 and 8 minutes to walk 300 feet from merge to inside the house, I hate complaining but it's something that I've noticed all season which didn't seem to be a problem with Wicked Growth
Depends on how you define helpful. For the in-house guest experience, it's obviously not great. But from a numbers perspective, I mentioned it before, but it simply gets much better results.
That’s what I mean. 29 had awful congestion in the houses and that year the Ops were horrible with rushing people through. This year seemed like people flew through the houses and Ops weren’t rushing people through. Again I’m basing it off of years of experiencing this event more than numbers. And I don’t know what the numbers say since most of the issues this year seem to stem from outside the houses not in them.
Again not trying to start an argument here, but with my own eyes people moved at a brisk pace without ops having to interfere and without being on top of each others heels. Outside the houses however lines seemed to be backed up for no reason. I am fairly certain just watching the ops outside controlling the lines, they seemed woefully inefficient. Whether it's the line ops, or the way lines are setup that's the problem, it isn't people not moving fast enough in the houses that are the problem since the lines moved way quicker this year than in years.
It's like traffic on the road, too many people in a tight space causes others to slow down, which cause ones behind them to slow down and so on and so forth. It's a snowball effect. Put people toes to heels in an incredibly tight space, they are gonna slow down, congest and stop moving for moments on end. That didn't happen in the houses this year and it's cause they didn't force people to basically climb on top of each other in the houses. I can see that with my own eyes.
Outside the houses, that's a different story. Don't know what they are doing when it comes to lines, but they are obviously not efficient.
A 2nd stage show is 100% needed next year - Nightmare Fuel is at or near capacity for most of its shows. The houses are full as well, HHN will need to figure something out for next year and ticket price increases obviously didn't do much. No free parking until 12 didn't do much either.
Some of you will hate me for saying this, but HHN needs a minimum of 4 popular/somewhat known IPs to do a better job spreading the crowds. We really only have 2.5 IPs this year (I feel Blumhouse is a constant 90+ min wait due to its location, not the IP utilized).
A 2nd stage show is 100% needed next year - Nightmare Fuel is at or near capacity for most of its shows. The houses are full as well, HHN will need to figure something out for next year and ticket price increases obviously didn't do much. No free parking until 12 didn't do much either.
Some of you will hate me for saying this, but HHN needs a minimum of 4 popular/somewhat known IPs to do a better job spreading the crowds. We really only have 2.5 IPs this year (I feel Blumhouse is a constant 90+ min wait due to its location, not the IP utilized).
The nights I have been it seems like the Blumhouse wait is 90+ due to the line just not moving even after the Express merge. It could have just been the times I was in line but the line management seemed the poorest of all the houses.
The nights I have been it seems like the Blumhouse wait is 90+ due to the line just not moving even after the Express merge. It could have just been the times I was in line but the line management seemed the poorest of all the houses.
Because of the location. No matter where you start the night at, front stages or tents, there will be a point where everyone meets in the middle and cause a surge of express & standby.
