After seeing how the park operated throughout their larger, more popular, more profitable event, Howl-O-Scream, I think that doom and gloom is coming from a very reasonable place unfortunately.
There are things I'm excited about—the death of the tree maze thing, the return of multi-station operations on the railroad, arctic Apollo, a Christmas version of Celtic Fyre, the return of Scooge No More—I'm looking forward to all of these things. That said, that positively is vastly overshowed in my mind by the spectre of the operations nightmares to come. No amount of arctic Apollo or Celtic Fyre will be worth one hour parking lines to tramless parking lots, two hour food lines for generic, cost-cut, main season menus, impassable pathways with zero attempt made at an ounce of crowd control, endless line jumping due to the lack of any security presence, dramatically reduced park theming and lights, etc.
I think most folks believe that Christmas Town has been an event in decline over the last handful of years—and having seen Howl-O-Scream 2021, I think people are, reasonably, terrified that that decline is about to turn into a complete free fall.
