For SNW, I'm a bit confused on what you meant by "escalators", since I don't recall Hollywood's SNW having them. In my experience the line did get capped within minutes of Yoshi appearing in the main land.
I mean the escalators to get to the lower lot. Like, seriously, the line went that far back.
But I basically agree with everything you said. And yeah, if you wanted to get everything done in one night, including a lot of the character meet and greets, then I do think Early Entry could be worth it. If character meet and greets are not as important to you, or you just want to do one or two, then you probably don't need it.
I think overall, the response has been pretty positive, but certainly not everything is going to satisfy every person. It's really going to depend on what you're looking forward to most. Honestly, I'm not a particular fan of ANY of these properties... but I still did enjoy myself on the whole.
And I do have to admit, all those years of HHN operations are really coming into play. On the whole, ops are pretty good. And it's impressive how much infrastructure was invested on this initial outing... from merch, to signage, to new purple team member robes, to purple carpet, graphics on the wait time boards, music playlists, etc..
It will be interesting to see if they do anything to better deal with the overwhelming Yoshi demand, though.... to me, that seemed to be the roughest ops (as you can see in the pic!). But I don't know if USH was prepared for that level of response. Hopefully, they maybe reassess a better way to handle that.