I think the marketing stuff has more to do with location than the event itself, if that makes sense. Ellen shoots content here because she works here; celebrities attend the event because they can just drive to the park and spend an evening. If those things were true to Orlando, you’d see a lot more of it, I’m a thousand percent sure. They wouldn’t pass up that kind of publicity.
And the IP thing — again, there are lots of haunt events in this area, but HHN is one of the very few that can avail themselves to intellectual property, so they lean on that as a differentiator. In fact, they need to use IPs because if they tried to compete with originals, they’d fail more often than not because the caliber elsewhere is seriously that high. It’s why I always push back on having originals at HHN. Original mazes dilute the quality and uniqueness of the event, but that’s just my opinion, plenty of people disagree.
I will always point to the backlot, too. HHN is partly a celebration of horror, and Universal Studios Hollywood is hallowed ground. Orlando, like I said, is just a theme park. They have amazing resources at their disposal, mostly in the way of available space and infrastructure, but there’s an intangible quality that the movie studio brings to HHN Hollywood.