I felt like it worked though, like none of the houses seemed like a straight up transplant of anything from BGT at least. I will say however that the icy themed one (whose name escapes me) felt like a "frozen" version of Unearthed, and even reused that same little piano riff at the end.
But credit where it's due, I really loved the amount of immersion and atmosphere we got last year. The street shows, the themed bars, and the scare zones that all tied in with the different houses really made the event feel high caliber and I had a better time because of it than I did at HHN, running around to 10 disparate houses with an express pass. I think I'd be happy if the four houses from last year got some nominal changes to keep things fresh, maybe one or two new houses were added on, and at least Kraken/JTA were kept open for the event. And now that the company has very publicly announced they have money, it seems silly that they'd be unable to scrape together the budget to make that happen, especially for such a profitable event.