I would say that you're comparing Apples and Oranges, but to give my opinion on your questions:
Behind the scenes/Ride the movies aesthetic - This changed based on the pallet of guests that wanted more immersive environments and worlds, Harry Potter really ushered in this era as the new template to base theme park attractions around. I suppose they felt that changing from 'look how your favorite media is made' to 'step inside a fully realized world of your favorite media' is much more exciting to the average person and much more lucritive to the resort as a whole. This honestly makes a ton of sense, and I personally don't think that Universal has lost any edge in this regard. When you think about it, HHN has adopted this model just as much as the parks.
Screens vs practical - I think here is where the parks have lost a bit of magic but seem to be steering back. To be honest though, screens are reliable, predictable, and provide a consistent ride for a much lower price tag. I get it. I think Universal saw this opportunity and ran with it for a while, now I think they are understanding their model and what people want no longer support rides like this. In other words, the immersion must be seamless and screens in their current iteration just can't deliver on that.
Set driven/practical elements of HHN - To be honest, it's not like HHN has a choice of whether or not to be a practical/set driven event. At the end of the day an event like HHN will always be theater. Where I see them losing a bit of edge in the coming years is with their creative scare tactics. The obsession with creating a 'scene' rather than a 'scare' may start to bite them in the butt a little, but we shall see. Overall, HHN is pretty locked in with what they can/can't do. I have seen more projection used at HHN, but I don't think it is in any danger of remaining practical...It has to be that way.
Side note: do we think Braillard is the next Aiello?
Oh, I understand exactly what you mean! It was mostly rhetorical. Your points all make sense from a financial and longitudinal perspective. I also have to admit that there isn’t anything I don’t like about the way that Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley are designed (besides those cramped locker rooms and hey has anybody ever said anything about the weird not-marble covering on those columns in Gringotts? Just a personal weird thing). Immersive lands are great.
I guess F&F might have also been seen as their big moneymaker, but I don’t see how it’s justified to take out something as unique as Disaster! to clear up that space. USF was just built around film production, and that was so unique for a theme park (and so intriguing that Disney chose to copy them at the same time). Kong feels less like a big-bucks property, but I feel that, to compensate for that, they did put out some neat practical things, like the giant facade and the final animatronic.
All in all, though, I just want to throw out there that reliability isn’t as much of an issue as it might seem. Personally, I’ve never seen a practical effect fail in Forbidden Journey; in fact, the only things I’ve seen go down were the quidditch game screen and the facial recognition feature for the projection. Has Gringotts ever had a big issue with any of its central components? Again, I don’t want to generalize, so please call me out if this stuff actually isn’t that reliable.
I’m not anti-screen, as I feel FJ and Gringotts (but especially FJ) do a fantastic job of blending real sets and screen components. It’s seamless, whereas Kong is clunky. Fallon and F&F are entirely screen-based attractions. Harry Potter still makes money in the end, and though it may be because the IP is bigger, I’m just saying that FJ doesn’t hold its position as one of the best dark rides for so many years for nothing... Also, Spider-Man has my favorite screen-physical combo effect of all time when Hobgoblin throws the pumpkin bomb through the bridge. Love that.
Yeah, HHN has to be practical, and I’m not saying that they do it better or anything because it is. It’s literally a necessity. I just feel that they’ve given up on employing actors for anything other than meet-and-greets or their Harry Potter shows, and that takes away a little magic. If we’re not even talking about full-blown practical-effect attractions, things like Beetlejuice’s Graveyard Revue are special, doable, and not particularly expensive to run. I dunno. I love Uni, but I can’t deny that I prefer IoA for its number of older/practical attractions.
There’s a balance that we don’t have much of now (and I’m just glad nothing has happened to “update” Mummy in all its animatronic glory).
