Some guesses where the "Van Pelt" came from....
Van Helsing is a famous fictional vampire slayer in movies who looks a lot like the Van Pelt character here as played in 2004 by Hugh Jackman. The earlier mention of this vampire hunter "Abraham Van Helsing", who showed up in the late 1800's novel Dracula, and was urbane, sophisticated, very well educated, etc. funnily enough looks more like Alucard here, based on the original 1931 movie! Additionally, there is also a character from the Peanuts cartoon series named Linus Van Pelt, who believed that every Halloween, similar to Santa Claus, "The Great Pumpkin" would arise from a pumpkin patch flying around the world bringing toys to kids. So IMO there's a few subtle takes on vampire/Halloween popular culture going on this event!
It looks like in this new, more energy intensive Community Event script, it is the Sparkling Mine that is the big bottleneck. Ivy may be generous now, but the mines aren't! And those mine drops weren't included in the Value Pack, and haven't dropped generously from the event Adventure.
I too am unhappy with the new requirements. I spent a lot of time & some $$ to get to where I could generally finish a community event by Monday night, giving me either a full blown break or time to leisurely work on my setup. I happily spent $$ to get my accounts there. Now it looks like I will have to dog it through event end. I won't be doing events much if this trend continues. Which likely means S8 won't get $ from Value Packs I purchase for events that I want to finish but am pressed for time.