I personally don't mind the changes, but then again, I've been a rabid fan of theme parks in general for ages, so I've learned a lot about how the industry works and SDC is just trying to keep up. If they were to just do the same thing every year and not change/update/add... crowd growth would stagnate and they'd eventually start losing guests/money.
My generation has a different idea of what we are looking for entertainment-wise. I think the best suggestion I've seen so far with this more recent discussion is to have set times scheduled for street shows and craft demos. The economy has a big chunk of families having to have both parents working or single people working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. So when we DO plan a vacation, it tends to be done with careful planning and budgeting.
Set times that are easily findable means we can see ahead of time what to do in what order when we visit the park. Basically, just see how Disney does it. With the Magicband system, you're able to reserve a time for rides and then go about your day until your time comes up. Virtual queuing and boarding pass systems are become common because we want to be able to schedule our day. And with character meet & greets, they have set times for specific characters at specific meeting spots. I think the only "streetmosphere" I've seen that as far as I know doesn't have a set schedule is the citizens of Hollywood at Hollywood Studios. But I could be wrong about that; Disney's pretty good at having a schedule for everything.
And speaking of Disney, we can also look to it as an example of a park with increasing crowds in a park with infrastructure/pathing/etc built for the expected hundreds a day when it opened in the 50s, not the 50,000 a day they get on average now.
So they had to widen paths, which sadly meant getting rid of some trees and what-not. But the result has been much better flow of crowds and therefore less stress and tension in the crowd and therefore people having a happier day.
SDC was not built for high attendance. Their annual attendance when they
first opened in '60 was 120k. FOR THE WHOLE YEAR. Now they bring in 20k+ several days a week (depending on the season).
Unfortunately, in order to ease the flow of the crowds, trees are gonna have to be taken down for paths to be widened. But there are still SO many trees. A few here and there won't be a big deal. I'm sure they've taken down plenty of trees that we've never even noticed before. Plus, they plant multiple trees elsewhere for every tree they cut down, so they're being conscientious about our planet (which cannot be said for a vast majority of multi-million/billion dollar corporations).
ANYWAY, TL;DR: I am okay with the changes at SDC because they have to make the park future-proof for the younger generations and the increasing crowds. And I appreciate the updates you give us, Swoosh, and I hope you continue to let us know about them. Thank you.