Because there’s a friggin pandemic
At the end of the day, this.
As a traveler, I've already canceled my plans for an October vacation. Personally, I don't care if they use the assets they've already created in some sort of mini event and I don't get to personally see them. It won't be the first or last time I haven't/won't get to experience HHN houses in person, which I can live with. I'll be disappointed if they don't decide to reuse or rework whatever they do show in the next full iteration of the event since I do love the event so missing out on anniversary houses would be a bummer but again, I can live with it.
What well and truly stinks is the "notion" that HHN was originally canceled mostly due to safety precautions surrounding the event. If they do decide to surge forward with an event that throws more caution to the wind with regards to safety of both their employees as well as guests, I would be massively disgusted. America has treated a global pandemic like a joke and pushing an HHN-lite event would be a new low on that front from Universal. I don't care how much anyone wants to spiel about the company 'needing money' or 're-invigorating park visitation'. It's a pandemic, people are dying and will continue to die, that so far exceeds the cold hearted greed of any company.
A daytime add-on that allows guests to walk through an empty house or two with no scareactors and heavy pulsing/pushing through it? Sure. A night time event open to the public that will undoubtedly draw a massive crowd because it'll be "full HHN" to most of the general population? Universal and Comcast will come off as huge hypocrites who have looked at the swelling of crowds on the weekends and thought to themselves 'hey, maybe we'll make a nice chunk of change if we do throw some HHN scraps to them after all?'.
I get it, they're big businesses who only operate to make money. Not denying it. Just a touch of humanity in the face of a global pandemic would be a little nice. I thought we got that with the original cancellation but here comes the backtrack.