Honestly, I'll cop to being wrong so far on this one too.
That also being said...I have a hard time believing killing ROF will end up replicating the same effects next year. I think most people will then just move to FFP+ and maybe you'll save Saturdays during September...but maybe make the rest of the event more busy overall.
Still feel like making annual pass levels with different number of possible visits and requiring reservations is the best solution, as much as people probably don't want to hear that.
I think we all were wrong. Bias of being on an HHN-obsessed site and all that. And I totally agree, other than I think it would be FF rather than FF+, so after opening night September Fridays would be dead as well, only to have sell-outs every Sunday of the event. Plus eliminating RoF is going to upset a number of resort guests barring some new deal to compensate. I don't envy Universal having to figure this out, tho my guess is they throw their hands up and just jack up prices across the board.
Columbus Day week crowds have become historically busy at both Disney & Universal. WDW was busy the past week also. Not everyone is a HHN fan, that's why they need to keep it a one park event. ...Just curious....For those who have been to HHN in Sept. & Oct. , has there been a visible change in age demographics since the multi night tickets cutoff?
3 and 4-day vacations replaced the traditional week-long vacation earlier this century. I remember when Fall Break became a thing everywhere but Florida, so WDW was underpriced and had crowds that weekend rivaling Christmas week.
Biggest demographic shift is lack of cosplayers/bounders, probably fewer HHN shirts. Still plenty of kids. If anything, lines at Finns have gone down a bit, but that could be just lower crowd levels all around.
We also have two of the biggest IPs of all time.
Maybe having stranger things and last of us at the same time was a problem?
Obviously rush of fear and the cost of ffp tickets was a problem. Everyone rushed to buy frequent fear pass.
But the 2 IPs had to play a part. Maybe having two mega ips was bad for crowds combined with rush of fear.... .
Because universal could have saved last of us for next year.
Less horror t shirts, less bloggers, less people with horror bags or purses. Kind of
I get there at midnight. Much much less people using free parking at midnight. September was absolutely insane to park.
I'd say 2.5 mega IPs -- Chucky may still be a genre-only hit, but easily on a par with Freddy and Jason at this point. And yet ... slower than usual Columbus Day weekend and Hell Week. Where did the crowds go as Halloween season revs up? If anything, we were wrong, the IPs aren't necessarily the draw we always assumed they were, at least to casual fans. If RoF oversold, it's because HHN itself is the draw.
You're definitely right about the crowd flow, which I think supports the idea this is a casual crowd, not super-fans.
