Every group has a group leader. That person knows what is going on more than the rest and used that info to convince others to go. There are also some unavoidable things you will see on the site when purchasing tickets, on advertisements on the way to the event, and on giant signs as you enter the park. SOME things will stick. Granted, most people are just there to have a good time and go home. Does that make them a moron?
Either way, this group leader will lead the group with this knowledge, whether it is very limited or very vast. And they will either fail spectacularly or succeed in getting their group through the mazes based on the information they do know. I'd say maybe 20% of the groups collectively as a whole are actual bumbling idiots who somehow wandered in and are just looking for an excuse to drink, while just getting in the first line they see.
But I wouldn't call the stressed-out mom trying to take her brat kids for the first time a moron -- maybe misinformed or not informed enough. Or the rich dad taking his spoiled kids by getting them FOL as they just coast through everything without a care in the world and leaving without much thought of what they had just seen. Same thing with the one friend who is genuinely into this, but is a bad group leader, or doesn't know how to navigate the park, or rally their friends together to listen. Same thing with the guy taking his girlfriend out on a date, trying to impress her, but finding out too late he is ill-prepared by the mounting lines and is just trying to make their date happy by doing whatever they want to do or taking initiative but again, realizing they needed to do their research before they come.
It's not the GP's fault the event literally needs a gameplan to successfully do anything. By most standards, logic tells us why shouldn't I be able to show up at 8pm, have some drinks, then go enjoy some scary things? Honestly, I WISH it were that way. And the day I can get all my friends on the same page to drop some cash for FOL, rest assured, I'm doing it.
These are honestly all logistics that need to be brought up in corporate meetings to simplify and streamline the event. It literally shouldn't be this complicated. It certainly isn't at Knotts (though I hate that place sometimes). Which I think is a good indicator to the averse being true. The new mazes have longer lines. The favorites have longer lines. The ones with slow throughput have longer lines. The old and decrepit are short. The ones that suck are short. I think that place is proof there is truth to that reasoning and it changes every year, not so much based on crowd flow (while it is a factor, but the main factor being popularity).