SeventyOne
Platinum Member
Virtually every solution proposed comes down to "make everyone but me pay more." (With a small minority of "make other people do things during the event that wouldn't interest me.")Effectively doubling the price for the “power users”. Hmmm.
The discussion may be moot after last night--see below--but I think the best solution for out-of-town guests would be a buy-two-get-one (or two) deal limited to hotel guests, after single night rates are jacked up. If 1-night tickets are in the $125 range, 3 nights for < $300 seems a deal. That would also give UOR a better handle on when other multinight tickets are likely to be used.
For in-town guests, higher prices across the board.
New hypothesis: A lot of locals settled for RoF due to price increase and may have had a hand in the crowd stuff. We’ll see how the next few weeks are.
I still have lingering doubts, but yeah, that's the most obvious take-away from last night. Emptiest the event has been all year, from parking booths (choice of empty lanes at 7:30) to security (abandoned the forced queue into the JP garage from Spidey) to the ticket gate to houses and even zones. Jungle of Doom was an easy walk-through around 10! You could move through "MiB Circle" with ease. I saw multiple Freestyle machines without a line throughout the night. At one point, just as HNF was starting, Oddfellow was a walk-in despite a 60-minute posted wait.
For many, the event is no longer about Halloween. It's about seeing and being seen in the Orlando lifestyler community.Anecdotally on Twitter, I noticed a LOT of regulars commenting on that their time with the event had come to a close due to the rush of fear period ending…
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Unrelated to the crowding discussion, but while I've joked about calling DCF on HHN guests before, last night it almost became reality. Saw a maybe 7 or 8-year-old special needs kid with a toddler toy being pushed through a house. To say nothing of the proliferation of strollers and elementary school-aged kids. It feels like the next big issue Universal needs to get a hold on. I'd love a hard 17 or 18 year-old limit, but at least 13 seems necessary.