Hot take: the USF problem is what happens when someone (the public? The industry trying to read the public’s mind?) decides that the core identity of your park isn’t cool any more but can’t fix on anything else to turn it into.
On a macro level, I often wonder if we will live to see either
a) a return to embracing the ‘movie studio’ identity — let’s face it, studio tours and similar are actually very in right now, so I don’t understand the aversion (the Hollywood tours, the London Warner Bros HP tour, limited-time things like directors’ retrospectives with props and art dept stuff such as a Wes Anderson one at the moment in London)
b) the (partial) death of ‘everything must be IP’ and at least a hesitant step back towards original concepts. Even a lot of commentators who aren’t strictly theme park fans seem to have noticed it over the past couple of years and I suspect that, like everything else, people will get tired if the keep being fed the same stuff ad nauseum.
Personally — I hope we see both…