I’m with you. People don’t experience things anymore, they shoot shaky videos of them.
This annoys me so much. We sat behind a family of 3 on Frozen Ever After where both parents videoed the entire ride (blocking our kids' view) and totally ignored their toddler sitting between them!
I figured it out
see my edit!
While there is always something... I also think Christmas and the surrounding weeks at Disney are a crowd phenomenon like no other. The next 2 weeks will provide a true indication of the staying power of 10k+ people arriving at DHS prior to park opening each day. Simple math suggests that there should be some relief, the question is how much, and is that offset by more people becoming better prepared through research.
I tend to agree. We are multiple times a year visitors now, but this was our first Xmas/New Year's trip and ... the crowds were beyond anything I've seen (even Easter and Thanksgiving and President's week/end). While I know my experience with RotR may color my view and lead me to be more hopeful than most, I tend to think that whether or not the ride breaks down is really the rate limiting step. They still give out backup BGs in the hope that people will get to ride, as evidenced by the fact that eventually all backup BGs get filled too. Looking back at the chart, the 2 days we managed to ride were 12/23 and 12/25, and those were some of the best days in terms of ride performance since they got through 192 (!!!!!!!) and 165 BGs on those days.
On 12/23, it was raining and we took a double stroller and 2 kids, 4 and 8. Tapped in at 6:57 for a 7am open. When we got out of the uber around 6:30, the line was well behind bag check. But we loved the experience so much that we made a decision to try on 12/25 - assuming (correctly, it seems, by looking at 12/31 and 1/1 stats) that some people might open presents or do other holiday observances that morning, we decided to do the heathen thing and try again on the last day of 7am open. We got to the park earlier, and were a little farther ahead in the crowd waiting to enter, but still behind bag check. By 9am both days, wait times at SDD and MF were well over 2 hours, if not longer. (On the second day, we walked directly to MF and still waited about an hour to ride with a posted wait time of under an hour).
As far as I could tell, on 12/23 there were no delays or stoppages to speak of (as I was watching for our BG to be called) and 12/25 it was down for maybe 30 minutes in the AM. If they could get through close to 200 BGs in a day, that would be amazing, and it would take the pressure, anxiety and pain out of being assigned a backup BG - because then a BG of 100+ would mean you could spend several hours that day doing something else completely, and come back closer to late afternoon. For us, our BGs were called around mid-late morning each day. We managed to do some other rides via FP and standby that effectively had us out of the park by lunchtime, and able to park hop to Epcot via the skyline. IF they're able to run the ride more reliably and efficiently, I could see this being the plan going forward - everyone comes at or near park opening, and if your BG is <100 you can expect to ride before 1pm, and >100 means afternoon or evening. I think a lot of the saltiness and anxiety about the BG system would be alleviated if all BGs, including backups, could get to ride that day most of the time.
I figured you out before you said this 
