Thursday night felt busier than last weekend all around. Even rolling up around 7:30, parking was a cluster -- spent 5 minutes in a dead stop as soon as I drove thru the toll booth. The crowds in the streets and queue wait times were notably worse than the "sold out" nights, every F&B point of sale down to the beer carts had at least a 15-person line all night. I hear it was one of the few nights TMs can still attend with guests, and the crowd reflected that. Lot of parents with tweens, but a lot of college-age kids enjoying illicit substances as well. Security feels non-existent this year, to a point they probably should just confiscate vape pens in the Rotunda. Tons openly being used in line, some with tobacco, some not.
My current theory isn't that tickets were oversold opening weekend, but Express was. They've reconfigured a couple of the Express lanes to greatly increase capacity--Wicked Growth, in particular, now stretches all the way past MiB to the service road and back again, in addition to the Express queue they used opening weekend. (S)Carey now goes all the way to the back of the house, before coming back up. That said, Express worked well last night, generally 10 minutes or less, just with a lot of extra walking.
Random thing: all weekend, Duff Gardens bartenders yelled at patrons not to line up, and to just order somewhere around the bar. Last night, back to a single line, stretching across the walkway. Of course, no signage either time to announce the change. It feels like that typifies an event trying to handle a larger than expected crowd with less staff than anticipated.