Looking back; it’s funny that the reason this park exists was because Eisner wanted to show off Universal. Both this and USF were meant to be “studio parks”. For both cases the studio theme was a failure and is pretty irrelevant now but while USF is a successful park, Disney’s Hollywood Studios is just… okay and definitely the least interesting of all the Disney Parks in Florida.
In many ways the "studio parks" aim to turn the idea of "themed experience" inside out.
Where as Haunted Mansion appears to be a functioning Haunted Mansion (when really it's just a clever facade and a well hidden showbuilding)
In a studio park the showbuilding
is the facade and the "haunted mansion" is tucked away inside
What was once an attempt to "hide" is now part of the experience, creating an experience where peering behind the curtain was no longer wrong, but part of the fun.
If you think about it, in Magic Kingdom, if you see a showbuilding or go behind a facade, you are typically being e-vacd or somewhere you aren't supposed to be
However, Catastrophe Canyon showed you a disaster scene in a canyon and then drove around and showed you the back of that canyon as nothing more than a nest of steel and concrete.
It was a unique concept at the time and definitely something audiences ate up, not necessarily a "failure"...it just had a short shelf life before it became garrish and cheap (in appearance)
IMO Hollywood Studio's big issue is it wasn't as fleshed out as Universal Studios was upon opening.
Even with the additions of TSL and SW, I still feel this way.