Universal Fan Fest Nights - Coming 2025

[Jerroddragon]

I went last night got the 49 Dollar ticket

I started with D&D last night and yeah....thats a mistake. I was done with over 30 mins until SNW opened early, so I walked on Jurassic...which I will talk about more in the Jurassic thread but looks like new lighting at the end of the ride unless today for some reason it jumped out on me more.

You start with Star Trek and go down to D&D to me is the best bet

I went to SNW it opens about 10 min early from 7 PM

I saw Pink Yoshi within 5 mins and was allowed to get back in line to finally meet the Blue Yoshi and he was fantastic for sure the best one of the three in my opinion

BTFF has a 20 min wait after that, so I walked on Star Trek but after that BTTF had no line so went down there

BTTF is so much fun got lucky and Marty was coming out as the Tram stopped. I got to finally talk with young Doc and he's great. I got to see Marty and Doc talking about the plan to get him back and its pretty funny with all the guests yelling things and I saw Biff get taken out...from there he just walking around not saying a word. The Einstein line was maybe 20 mins when I went...but more like 15.....and now its insane easily over 30 mins the last two times I went

I got back to Hogsmeade in time to see the castle show.

I then saw some of the Flux Capacitors and talked to them a little after the show

I met Zoro and Nami in about 30 mins....took longer because some vloggers took over 5 mins to do videos. I make content, this to me is BS. I can be in and out within 60 seconds but whatever no one is stopping people so this is why the line is so long, would be nice to put people more on timers with such long lines. Wicked and Yoshi don't see to have this issue as much

Took 20ish mins to meet Luffy, the actor has so much energy good for him

The Sanji/Ussop line was the longest all night that I could see and at 12:30 AM the characters all meet people int he normal shrek/trolls area.

Left after that and will be back Sunday to close the event out.

 

[saint.piss]

This makes sense. I remember when someone reported on it as far as 2023.

 

[Wesker69]

The vague promotion was a poor decision.

That also translates as "we don't want to spend money on marketing, let the influencers do it for us for free"

 

[Jerroddragon]

The vague promotion was a poor decision.

That also translates as "we don't want to spend money on marketing, let the influencers do it for us for free"

Yeah, like WTF does that even mean


Whats funny is less then an hour after The Summer event was announced I got and have been getting a ton of ads for the USH summer event and that event for the most part is straight forward with a few surprises we might see but mostly its easy to market

I'm not against Vloggers helping but the previews for most of the Vloggers were kinda wrong they all talked about how interactive the two attractions D&D and Star Trek are so I would say thats not great marketing when even your biggest fans don't know whats going on until night one.

I love the event but the marketing for the event was not great and think just some simple videos showing off parts of the attractions, showing BTTF area all dressed up and characters walkign around and showing the Wicked and One piece meet and greet people....but nope lets show someone grabbing onto a tram with a skateboard which in no way happens at the event

Just be straight forward with people, its a good event just had to show it off to make a good ad.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

The vague promotion was a poor decision.

That also translates as "we don't want to spend money on marketing, let the influencers do it for us for free"

Hard to blame them when there are hundreds and hundreds of people willing to promote an event in exchange for a free ticket to said event. The amount of people who crave access and are willing to be uncritical in order to gain access is huge and getting huger, and people keep paying attention to them, too. Some more traditional marketing definitely would have helped, but as we're pointing out, there's a lot that Universal has to promote right now.

Throwing this stuff to fan culture influencer accounts feels like a safe strategy.

 

[Jerroddragon]

Hard to blame them when there are hundreds and hundreds of people willing to promote an event in exchange for a free ticket to said event. The amount of people who crave access and are willing to be uncritical in order to gain access is huge and getting huger, and people keep paying attention to them, too. Some more traditional marketing definitely would have helped, but as we're pointing out, there's a lot that Universal has to promote right now.

Throwing this stuff to fan culture influencer accounts feels like a safe strategy.

But also those people will do it no matter what

So make a real ad showing the event next year, that is why they have a marketing team

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

But also those people will do it no matter what

So make a real ad showing the event next year, that is why they have a marketing team

They'll do what no matter what? Go to the event? Sure, but influencers survive off access and "getting there first." There's a tacit agreement in influencer marketing that the influencers will be positive in their coverage if they're invited on behalf of the company. It's a pro bono situation; we give you free and/or exclusive access, you give us positive coverage. If they don't get the free invite, they're likely to be more critical, and then neither party gets what they want.

I don't disagree that a traditional ad or two would have helped, but I also see the reason behind leaning mostly on influencers. The event's format is a bit hard to explain succinctly and you're more likely to reach the niche audiences most interested in attending via these influencer channels.

 

[Clive]

What are we even talking about? People are taking this random comment from someone conducting a survey as gospel. "The vague marketing was intentional?" Sure, whatever. The actual difficulty was communicating what this event was when it had never been done before - and without having any attractions or offerings to show in the pre-event opening materials. To act like they just decided to not promote it and leave it all to the influencers is nonsensical.

 

[Jerroddragon]

They'll do what no matter what? Go to the event? Sure, but influencers survive off access and "getting there first." There's a tacit agreement in influencer marketing that the influencers will be positive in their coverage if they're invited on behalf of the company. It's a pro bono situation; we give you free and/or exclusive access, you give us positive coverage. If they don't get the free invite, they're likely to be more critical, and then neither party gets what they want.

I don't disagree that a traditional ad or two would have helped, but I also see the reason behind leaning mostly on influencers. The event's format is a bit hard to explain succinctly and you're more likely to reach the niche audiences most interested in attending via these influencer channels.

Errrr....Five Fires and many other's have gone like 5 times to the event I feel like no matter when you let people go they will go and I'm not against the Vloggers helping but they should not be the only ad for the park


I mean a 60 second add showing the BTTF area, walking through D&D and Star Trek and showing the meet and greet characters thats all I'm asking for a basic ad showing off the event

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

What are we even talking about? People are taking this random comment from someone conducting a survey as gospel. "The vague marketing was intentional?" Sure, whatever. The actual difficulty was communicating what this event was when it had never been done before - and without having any attractions or offerings to show in the pre-event opening materials. To act like they just decided to not promote it and leave it all to the influencers is nonsensical.

For the record, I'm not acting like they "decided to not promote it and leave it all to the influencers." I'm saying a marketing strategy that leaned heavily on social media influencers makes sense for literally every reason you laid out: a first-of-its-kind-event that not only lacked pre-existing context and brand familiarity, but is also tough to succinctly describe, which isn't a problem for something like HHN for extremely obvious reasons.

I think they did a good job getting the word of this event out. Having even more of a push behind it obviously helps but that's true for anything, and it's true by default. And maybe they did have a huge push, I dunno. I can't honestly say I saw every bit of advertising they did for this thing. But that's not the point I'm making. I think they see this as a long-term project and everything will build with time.

 

[highdefrex]

Errrr....Five Fires and many other's have gone like 5 times to the event I feel like no matter when you let people go they will go and I'm not against the Vloggers helping but they should not be the only ad for the park


I mean a 60 second add showing the BTTF area, walking through D&D and Star Trek and showing the meet and greet characters thats all I'm asking for a basic ad showing off the event

You’ve been to the event several times already. What do you need a 60-second ad for? To convince you to go again?

I feel like Universal did what they could do — they put out spots (I’ve seen on YouTube, etc.), billboards, and so on; that feeds people going, “What is that?” and following up by Googling it, whether they find articles about it or find videos by influencers or whatever, and then be convinced to go or not.

Advertisement doesn’t work the same way it did five, ten years ago; a 60-second ad isn’t going to do anything when the only people willing to even watch an ad that long nowadays are people like you who are already know about/are going to the event anyway.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

Advertisement doesn’t work the same way it did five, ten years ago; a 60-second ad isn’t going to do anything when the only people willing to even watch an ad that long nowadays are people like you who are already know about/are going to the event anyway.

People are going to see things on social first. Next year, when someone sees the 60-second ad or whatever else is supposedly necessary to promote the event, they're gonna go, "Oh yeah, that's the cool thing I saw on that Instagram Reel last year, I'm gonna check that out."

 

[Clive]

As a reminder, they shot a professional commercial for this event! It features friends across fandoms making their way through Citywalk in cosplay and entering the decked out park. Do I think it was necessarily the best ad that fully communicated what Fan Fest is? Not necessarily, no, but I also get that they did not have the opportunity to actually film the event's meat and potatoes. That won't be the case next year, as they will have footage from this year. You'll get professional shots of Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, and Back to the Future (assuming a mix of those return).

Anyway, I'm just objecting to the claim that the marketing was intentionally vague. It wasn't.

 

[Jerroddragon]

You’ve been to the event several times already. What do you need a 60-second ad for? To convince you to go again?

I feel like Universal did what they could do — they put out spots (I’ve seen on YouTube, etc.), billboards, and so on; that feeds people going, “What is that?” and following up by Googling it, whether they find articles about it or find videos by influencers or whatever, and then be convinced to go or not.

Advertisement doesn’t work the same way it did five, ten years ago; a 60-second ad isn’t going to do anything when the only people willing to even watch an ad that long nowadays are people like you who are already know about/are going to the event anyway.

Ads are almost never for me...I'm literally making videos on my own and am on here...I know whats happening

But the General Public needs ads so they know.

Disney does the normal Ads and works for them and this is literally a movie studios you think they'd want to make a cool ad

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

Ads are almost never for me...I'm literally making videos on my own and am on here...I know whats happening

But the General Public needs ads so they know.

Disney does the normal Ads and works for them and this is literally a movie studios you think they'd want to make a cool ad

 

[Jerroddragon]

I've seen it

I feel like a normal person with zeroooo knowledge of the event would know what is is after watching that. For me at least showing the scope of the D&D rooms, the details of the Star Trek bridge with people running around and the BTTF area would help show you, I know people are going to say I'm nit picking but I'm just pointing out the ads I see just don't do know to tell you why you need to come because they aren't highlighting the best parts of the event

Hopefully next year and if you guys like it cool, I just don't think the Ad really shows you much about the event and feels like "concert art" over what the finale product was

 

[Clive]

I've seen it

I feel like a normal person with zeroooo knowledge of the event would know what is is after watching that. For me at least showing the scope of the D&D rooms, the details of the Star Trek bridge with people running around and the BTTF area would help show you, I know people are going to say I'm nit picking but I'm just pointing out the ads I see just don't do know to tell you why you need to come because they aren't highlighting the best parts of the event

Hopefully next year and if you guys like it cool, I just don't think the Ad really shows you much about the event and feels like "concert art" over what the finale product was

You've been asked to knock off this rhetoric before, so I'm asking again.

It has been explained to you why the marketing was the way it was this year. They literally could not film what you are describing because those elements were not ready yet.

I even pointed out in the months and weeks ahead of the launch that I had concerns about how it was being marketed (while acknowledging the unavoidable challenges the park had in marketing it). You'll likely get what you're asking for next year.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

I feel like a normal person with zeroooo knowledge of the event would know what is is after watching that. For me at least showing the scope of the D&D rooms, the details of the Star Trek bridge with people running around and the BTTF area would help show you, I know people are going to say I'm nit picking but I'm just pointing out the ads I see just don't do know to tell you why you need to come because they aren't highlighting the best parts of the event

……which is why they use influencers. You can’t “highlight the best parts of the event” if the event has literally never happened before.

You’re in one of your “there’s no pleasing me” moods again.

 

[Tillsy]

G’day guys


I’ve been a lurker for the past nearly year on this thread and thought I would join up to contribute my experience.

My daughter and I went VIP last Friday night. We returned Sunday for the afternoon park access, early access, and then general admission FFN.

Let me also preface this by declaring we travelled over from Australia specifically for this event. For additional context we have never been to a convention and we holiday locally in Australia so this was a very big and expensive deal (around $13,000 all up) specifically for Fan Fest nights – we took the shortest trip possible with our flights, 6 days, and squeezed in what we could such as Disneyland and all the other studio tours but it was entirely about Universal Fan Fest.

Finally I’ll add that my daughter and I are obsessed TNG fans. Further from this immense trip being purely for Universal Fan Fest, our interest in FFN was for the Enterprise-D bridge. It is the sole reason we went – there was just no way we couldn’t snap up the opportunity to step on and in to that bridge.

We were quite stressed about VIP. The information for it was quite confusing and vague but it seemed like the smart thing to do given we were going over specifically for the experience. As time went on we continued to find very little to no information about it, even after FFN started. In fact commentary (including here) was quite critical that there were zero wait times and that express was not necessary.

Very relieved to report that was not the case. I can’t vouch for other nights but Friday night there were lines everywhere with average wait times of half hour. We were obviously able to bypass these and did so over and over and over – during which we saw the same people (easy to recognise, people really dressed for the occasion as did we) progressing down the lines in the time we did this.

 

[Tillsy]

We started off with dinner which was stunning, and we got to know a lot of people as multiple people (from different VIP groups)Z came over to my daughter and I super impressed with our outfits. We were then given a guided tour from event to event and honestly it was fantastic as we would have otherwise done the equivalent of what we did at Disneyland and stayed at one theme (eg Disneyland we did Star Wars all day and night, we would have only done Star Trek and BTTF without our tour). Lasted 5 hours and then we were free – which we smashed things until 2am on the dot (the very last ones going through Star Trek). Hit the merchandise until around 2:30 and then made our way back to the hotel.


The second visit on Sunday we smashed things like Jurassic World during the afternoon, which we didn’t want to do in our uniforms on the Friday night, and Mario Kart. Wait times were about half hour again, though not relevant as that wasn’t FFN. When early access started we hit Star Trek immediately given we were general admission this time – wait times were about 10 minutes for the first 1.5 hours. It wasn’t until 6:30ish that we encountered the said “no wait times” and literally just looped over and over and over like we had done with VIP to get as many in as we could. In fact the final walk-through minutes before the 7:00pm opening was with only one other couple so I took the opportunity to film without anyone else being (mostly) visible.

From that point lines went insane, leaping straight to 30-40 minutes with people everywhere. I don’t like crowds or lines and after VIP/express this was a setback, so we went and had dinner to pass time. This reduced the lines to around 20-30 minutes which we endured thereafter for the remainder of the night. However, we did only stay until 10pm that night as we needed to head to Disneyland early the next morning so I would suggest it would have died off after that.

We had a blast. We really did. The event was so well run. It was epic. Even where there is high criticism of things such as Star Trek I can vouch as an utterly obsessed fan that they invested a mindboggling amount into creating phenomenally authentic sets. The only thing I could really nitpick would be the size of the warp core but there’s a level of practicality here. The grey wall panels, all the Okudagram stickers, LCARS panels, everything was top notch this was no amateur hour they went above and beyond. Even the changes to the bridge, and there were a LOT of them to a level I’ve not seen anyone anywhere commenting on, where a reality of the event and tied in with the storyline being directly after Picard Season 3 and therefore the D is now a museum ship. My only disappointment was the ship’s dedication plaque is not the real one – it’s a knockoff. A good knockoff, but a knockoff. A shame as it was the one and only original piece on that set, but understand why there is no way it would have been risked. Can I also add that the tension and effects were amazing – having done Star Trek 40 times we saw many different people, fans and non-fans alike, and were amused by some of the reactions. Some actually fell back, looked around, etc when you “felt” the entity come through the force field and saw the effects of it travel to the rear. When the turbo lifts vibrated as they moved, and even changed direction, many people were balancing themselves… one lady in particular my daughter and I had tears as, I kid you not, her eyeballs were poking out of her sockets she was utterly stunned that the turbolift was moving. It was done so well.