This kinda seems like a plan guaranteed to annoy just about everyone. If the houses are promised to return next year, that's somewhat better, but it still dilutes the impact of next years event, which seems like the exact opposite of what they'd want to do.
More importantly, I think this establishes a lot of bad precedents. A daytime event, upcharge mazes - not things I'm eager to see. By far the worst is the "certain mazes on certain nights." This is particularly insidious because the appeal to Universal is so clear - you force repeat visits and longer hotel stays while dramatically reducing the staff needed to run the event. Most guests don't see all the mazes anyway, so what's the harm? If this goes even moderately well, a lot of execs are going to get a lot of bad ideas.