The actual times for the "contest" are 9pm to 1am, so any contestants who are there with multiple day passes will probably be way too sleepy to get up early and go park hopping on Friday.
And although there are a maximum of 1700 qualifying contestants for the Quest for Gold, most of them are getting tickets for up to four people, so it could be 5000-6000 more in the park.
Here's my understanding of what's going on with this. Various sponsor organizations and radio and tv stations (many ABC affiliates) accross the country are holding "qualifying" contests. The main Quest for Gold contest itself is being run by Disney's travel company, and not by the
Disneyland Resort. Each of these stations and sponsors can "buy" into the contest for various numbers of qualifiers and tickets, etc. Like, for example, a radio station in AZ had one qualifying winner, but that winner also got a three day vacation for four, including transport, hotel, and tickets for four. But a station on So Cal had say 20 qualifying winners, each getting four one day park hoppers, but no transport or accomodations because they were in driving distance.
Because the main contest is being sponsored, at least in part, by the travel company, I would suspect they've blocked out a fair number of the on site hotel rooms for the contest winners who get accomodations, and probably a few more for Quest for Gold participants who win one of the bigger prizes and their party (to keep them onsite for easier access for interviews and publicity etc...)
Argh
crazy, I know....but it's all for the gold
And as far as I know, they won't be changing their schedule much from what is posted on the DL website, they've known about the contest for months now.