What If HHN Ran 7 Nights a Week?

[pumpkinbot343]

I’m admittedly making this thread for funsies (that and it’s an interesting topic I don’t know where else I can talk about this). I can guess that making HHN run every night of a week during September and October; basically the entire two months, would be a bad idea, but I don’t know exactly the reasons why nor can I adequately explain it since I’m not familiar with everything about the business practices of HHN. So for fun, what are all the reasons this would be a terrible business decision to run HHN every night of a week?

 

[Legacy]

It’s all the logistics and the follow-on effects.

Have to hire twice as many performers/managers/techs (can’t require seven-day work-week that exceeds 40 hours). That has the likely impact of decreasing the number of hours the current cast works. Enough hours must be available, which means three-four days for each side of casts. Doing THAT could make performing less attractive to people who like max hours of the whole event. That doesn’t account for more turnover/replacement requirements during the run.

The biggest issue, however, is house repairs/optimization. The days off are when things get repaired, adjusted, and optimized. The tech/creative team work the non-event nights to get effects right, repair damaged decor, and make significant adjustments. Those things are extremely difficult to execute in the day because (1) most of the crew works nights throughout the event (2) BTS tours prevent full access to the houses for crews to do major fixes.

 

[krazyhorrorkid]

It’s all the logistics and the follow-on effects.

Have to hire twice as many performers/managers/techs (can’t require seven-day work-week that exceeds 40 hours). That has the likely impact of decreasing the number of hours the current cast works. Enough hours must be available, which means three-four days for each side of casts. Doing THAT could make performing less attractive to people who like max hours of the whole event. That doesn’t account for more turnover/replacement requirements during the run.

The biggest issue, however, is house repairs/optimization. The days off are when things get repaired, adjusted, and optimized. The tech/creative team work the non-event nights to get effects right, repair damaged decor, and make significant adjustments. Those things are extremely difficult to execute in the day because (1) most of the crew works nights throughout the event (2) BTS tours prevent full access to the houses for crews to do major fixes.

To be fair you might not have to hire that many more people. A lot of performers/techs are use to running 50-60 hour work weeks in busy season. I’m not saying that EVERYONE does that but at that point you could just hire more part time people to fill in gaps.

But in reality the problem that really prevents this from happening is repairs and adjustments still need to be done quite frequently like you mentioned. They technically COULD change that schedule to happen during the night after HHN closes and they could fix or make adjustments to houses from 3AM- 7AM every night if they so please.
Lots of ifs and buts but if push comes to shove it could be done.

 

[Legacy]

To be fair you might not have to hire that many more people. A lot of performers/techs are use to running 50-60 hour work weeks in busy season. I’m not saying that EVERYONE does that but at that point you could just hire more part time people to fill in gaps.

But in reality the problem that really prevents this from happening is repairs and adjustments still need to be done quite frequently like you mentioned. They technically COULD change that schedule to happen during the night after HHN closes and they could fix or make adjustments to houses from 3AM- 7AM every night if they so please.
Lots of ifs and buts but if push comes to shove it could be done.

There’s a difference between doing 60-hours for two weeks, and doing 60 for 10.

And they typically start working on the houses immediately. The techs and managers work much longer hours than the performers.

 

[TheGentTrent]

It's not just scareactors. You need to staff park ops, food and beverage, security, etc. for 17-hour days. Would it even be worth it when Mondays and Tuesdays would be slow?

 

[bdubsCEO]

I would work 7 days a week.