Fwiw, this has been strongly proven false by many insiders. They're different budgets.
I'll just say I heard this over and over again from the employees. That include VIP tour guides and just regular front line employees. Some were in line waiting for houses and I just over heard their conversations. Some were just chatting over a drink in a bar pre
HHN. There were also little things I saw that make me think this is true in the parks in general.
Yes they may be separate budgets, that is not anything unusual, but that does not mean they were given the equivalent of what they got in the past.
Talking in depth with someone about the lack of SAs in houses I was told that Insidious was the only house to get a "budget" this year and that is why they pretty much have a full cast (someone mentioned they are actually down two folks from the start and were calling folks in - I think they have to have a full cast as part of the agreement for the IP - dont recall if that was on hear of one of the folks I spoke too - I think it was a VIP guide)
All that said - if Epic goes they way we think then we should see some pretty exciting changes over the years - I still don't think HHN will ever be what it was though.
For those that might be Interested I've mentioned these videos before and they are worth a watch if people really want to understand what was lost.
For me HHN28 is probably the last good year, but not as good as previous years. Interesting that is the year of Stranger Things.
After that you had lots of high and lows in my opinion.
At the end of the day the best house this year is just a rehash of a house from HHN25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udk1UcwHt9U
HHN29 was the year of graveyard games and they made good use of peoples phones for the backstory. This lead to more use of social media and podcasts to tell the story so you have to do homework before the event.
This mean for me this is the last year I feel they put crazy details into the houses. What I mean by that is ridiculously detailed houses where you would not even see stuff unless you did the behind the scenes tour. Yeah there is still some of that today - but nothing like it was before this. Its a small thing for most people, but for me its part of what I really liked about HHN and doing multiple nights and the behind the scenes tour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGctPfcuwa8
Obviously we skipped a year and the world changed a bit. I guess at this point you have PRE Pandemic HHN and Post Pandemic.
IMO post pandemic is more geared to folks that go to the event once and become a shadow of what it was.
Yeah Jack was great no doubt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLW5l6W3OdQ
I skipped HHN21 do to a death in the family. It looks like a very below average year and many of the folks in this forum said the same thing. I'm pretty sure that is also the year several of them stopped attending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUQl9FS8EVA
HHN32 and 33 were not great IMO.
Ill probable go to 34 because of Epic and Ill do the premium night if available and a couple of nights with ROF and skip express - I don't think Ill do the 10 nights I did this year..
Of course 35 since its an anniversary year - but that may be my cutoff for HHN - we will see.
One of my big regrets is I did not go the first few years even though I was at Universal as a day guest.
Anyway these videos are well worth a watch - he also has a lot of good videos on the history of numerous theme parks.
I also found out well watching his video on the Flintstones theme parks that he the SO of Super Enthused - so if you know Sam(?) from those videos that is him. Just interesting since I had no idea.
