Halloween Horror Nights 33 (UOR) - Construction | Page 16 | Inside Universal Forums

Halloween Horror Nights 33 (UOR) - Construction

  • Signing up for a Premium Membership is a donation to help Inside Universal maintain costs and offers an ad-free experience on the forum. Learn more about it here.
Wow, what a mess. I wonder if it's pushback against the design or worries over how weather can impact it's integrity? You would think all these questions were asked and answered.

I just want to stress that I love this event and will be there on opening day and enjoy my time there, but I think it's fair to criticize a few decisions this year at the same time.
 
I think that it looked pretty bad. and even without it, with the way the container is set up by blocking the entrance ( you have to enter by the side) the scaffolding definitely make it look like it was actual construction going on lol.
like if universal was renovating something
 
Wow, what a mess. I wonder if it's pushback against the design or worries over how weather can impact it's integrity? You would think all these questions were asked and answered.

I just want to stress that I love this event and will be there on opening day and enjoy my time there, but I think it's fair to criticize a few decisions this year at the same time.
It’s the latter.
 

If you have a relatively thin IP lineup, perhaps you don’t need to have the EXACT same promotional and merchandising strategy as when you have a very strong one.

Universal is going to be forced to move away from IPs. Changes in the Hollywood economic landscape and competing (weaker) parks securing big name IPs means that IPs will be both harder to license and less impactful. This should have been the year Universal pivoted to leveraging the other, much more signifiant and unique, strengths of the event. However, the event has become so ossified it seems incapable of making even such minor and necessary changes.

The other solution is for Universal to attempt to produce new and diverse in-house horror IPs to stock the event (Blumhouse isn’t enough), but that’s hard, very risky, and requires intracompany coordination of which I’m not sure they’re capable.
 
If you have a relatively thin IP lineup, perhaps you don’t need to have the EXACT same promotional and merchandising strategy as when you have a very strong one.

Universal is going to be forced to move away from IPs. Changes in the Hollywood economic landscape and competing (weaker) parks securing big name IPs means that IPs will be both harder to license and less impactful. This should have been the year Universal pivoted to leveraging the other, much more signifiant and unique, strengths of the event. However, the event has become so ossified it seems incapable of making even such minor and necessary changes.

The other solution is for Universal to attempt to produce new and diverse in-house horror IPs to stock the event (Blumhouse isn’t enough), but that’s hard, very risky, and requires intracompany coordination of which I’m not sure they’re capable.
IPs ARE the unique part of the event. Since its inception, the preponderance of IPs - especially bigger ones - was what made Universal different than any other haunt that does original concepts (minus the park itself). “Icons” were unique twenty years ago. Now? Any haunt can do it (and some have). Universal doesn’t have a monopoly on lore, or original concepts or creativity. They have money and IPs. That’s their trump card.
 
IPs ARE the unique part of the event. Since its inception, the preponderance of IPs - especially bigger ones - was what made Universal different than any other haunt that does original concepts (minus the park itself). “Icons” were unique twenty years ago. Now? Any haunt can do it (and some have). Universal doesn’t have a monopoly on lore, or original concepts or creativity. They have money and IPs. That’s their trump card.
HHN ran for over two decades before IPs came to dominate the event. External circumstances dictate that IPs are going to become consistently more difficult to acquire and will set the event apart less and less - they don’t have a monopoly on them anymore.

If we want to be very reductive and a bit cynical, what Universal has that other events don’t (yet) is lots of money. They can put that money towards IPs or they can develop new strategies to leverage that budget. Icons, lore, sophisticated design - Universal doesn’t have a monopoly on them but their financial advantage does allow them to both emphasize those elements and market them widely.
 
HHN ran for over two decades before IPs came to dominate the event. External circumstances dictate that IPs are going to become consistently more difficult to acquire and will set the event apart less and less - they don’t have a monopoly on them anymore.

If we want to be very reductive and a bit cynical, what Universal has that other events don’t (yet) is lots of money. They can put that money towards IPs or they can develop new strategies to leverage that budget. Icons, lore, sophisticated design - Universal doesn’t have a monopoly on them but their financial advantage does allow them to both emphasize those elements and market them widely.
Fright Nights… promoted with Beetlejuice. People Under the Stairs… year two. Cryptkeeper, yeah five. Psycho was key marketing aspect its first decade. 2002 had a Carnage shirt. The first year with NO IP (or IP featuring) houses or zones was 2004… year 14.

To say it went two decades before IP “dominated” is ignoring A LOT of its early years. You literally have two icons whose houses leverage IPs (Director - Die In and Usher - Silver Springs). Jack literally hosted an IP-focused year. That isn’t even touching the “not IP” rip-offs like Body Collectors or Bill and Ted. IPs have ALWAYS been intrinsic to the event, and the access to them was always a big reason it’s maintained its popularity.
 
Fright Nights… promoted with Beetlejuice. People Under the Stairs… year two. Cryptkeeper, yeah five. Psycho was key marketing aspect its first decade. 2002 had a Carnage shirt. The first year with NO IP (or IP featuring) houses or zones was 2004… year 14.

To say it went two decades before IP “dominated” is ignoring A LOT of its early years. You literally have two icons whose houses leverage IPs (Director - Die In and Usher - Silver Springs). Jack literally hosted an IP-focused year. That isn’t even touching the “not IP” rip-offs like Body Collectors or Bill and Ted. IPs have ALWAYS been intrinsic to the event, and the access to them was always a big reason it’s maintained its popularity.
There’s an ENORMOUS difference between how IPs were integrated into the event before and after 22 (the change arguably started with 17).

IPs will never be absent from the event. At the very least, Universal is a vertically integrated company that will use any event on the scale of HHN as a way to promote the company’s products. However, the overwhelming focus on IPs, especially ones licensed from outside, may have to change. It would be logical for IPs to return to the sort of usage they saw prior to 22.

As a side note, the use of knock-off, unlicensed IPs that we used to see at the event (including, I thought, in at least the first die-in house) is absolutely not unique to Uni - it’s a common feature of even the smallest haunt. The “official” stamp makes a big difference.