Just got back from visiting tonight, they must have stopped doing whatever they were doing with the house ops at the start of the season because the pulsing was perfectly reasonable for us, never waited longer than about 25 minutes for any house throughout the night and most runs we were on in less than 10.
I thought the houses were as good as or better than previous years at this event, with mostly strong premises (Collector's Curse is incoherent but the others all make strong setting choices, with Raveyard a particular highlight) and lots of fun interactions that you don't get with the strictly dialogue trigger scares at HHN. (Me: "Why is the alien taking a shower?" Farm guy: "even our bathrooms aren't safe!")
The IV bag SIF in the Wellness house still got to me and Raveyard was a very fun new addition. A stiltwalker at Farm 51 grabbed my shoulder? Which I think is technically not allowed but I'm fine with it. The bungee scares are always a highlight of the houses here and they were placed well and fully staffed. Lots of places that would have been dead zones in years past here were filled with Spirit Halloween tier robots, which isn't great but is way better for the overall energy than just having static scenery.
What has clearly suffered is the scare zones, which all feel sparse and understaffed compared to years past. Only the Trailer Park Tragedy one felt as alive as I had come to expect from this event, but to its credit that one was going all out with crazy guest interaction bits (at one point the scareactors were goading a guest into chugging his beer, and at another they had corralled someone into a cage and were forcing him to accept a marriage proposal??). One of the my friends was wearing a light costume with small angel wings and she did get chased down aggressively in every single zone by the end of the night, which was fun (for the rest of us if not for her). One of the stiltwalkers in the cannibal zone was going faster than I have ever seen a stiltwalker go.
So the zones weren't a total loss, but they were noticeably diminished (especially the area along the lake that used to be a campground zone but is now just a few guys in ghillie suits and then a long section of just, like, speakers playing loud toilet flushing noises? Really not sure what was going on there)
Monster Stomp remains the exact same show it has always been, beat for beat. If I hadn't been visiting with friends who had never seen it before I probably would have skipped it, it's a fun show but it's getting so stale and those bleachers are not getting any more comfortable.