But agree, HHN has the Halloween and Horror base, plus then you get IPs like FNAF, Stranger Things or last of us and you can draw in many who just love those IPs and come in for those
I think this sort of suggests something you keep overlooking when it comes to IPs and Fan Fest: The fact HHN has been around for 30 years. It's established. It can get those IPs because it's cultivated its base and grown in size and popularity in a way it can attract (and afford) those IPs to the event. If you go back and look at when it came back in 1997, it was a couple original houses with Tales from the Crypt, Bill and Ted, and Chucky thrown in (Beetlejuice had its regular daytime show open, so I'm not counting it).
1998 wasn't much bigger. 1999, okay, you start including the Mummy, you start attracting names like Rob Zombie and Clive Barker. 2000, you start getting stuff like Buffy. But it wasn't until the late 2000s that you could start getting stuff like Freddy and Jason and Michael and
Saw at the event, and that was only possible because that fledgling little "low budget" (comparatively) event came back year after year, establishing itself, expanding bit by bit.
FFN is in its second year. Its budget is much lower compared to HHN. Its brand isn't established as some sure-fire event. Heck, FFN has more IPs than HHN did in its first few years, and that's lucky. But Universal simply
can't throw millions at an event that's still in its infancy to get IPs whose cost outweighs budget, as easy as you might think it is and how dumb you think Universal is not for doing so.
It's going to take time and patience. If this was 1998, you'd be going, "Why isn't Universal bringing Jason and Leatherface and all these characters to HHN? Do they
want to fail and not appeal to millions of fans?" But with time, Universal was able to do just that.
In ten years, so long as they keep trying with FFN, who knows, it could be a big enough event where they're able to afford all these incredible IPs, just like HHN was
eventually able to, and we'll all look back at these earlier years as being so quaint. But arguing with people because it's not the event you want exactly how you want it amounts to nothing; all you
can do is go, support the event, and encourage your friends and family to go because
that's what actually paves the road for what you envision the event could possibly look like down the road.