[Ghoulish Delight]

I don't think it's the SoCal select people.

We went to the park the Monday immediately following the 50th, and it was jammed. And you could tell that it wasn't an AP crowd. The 50th was hella crowded, but it never felt jammed, and I attribute that to the fact that it was for the most part APers, people who know the park backwards and forwards. So what you don't have is countless people wandering aimlessly, stopping in walkways to figure out where they are going, going against traffic in known bottle-neck areas, or rushing around with any sort of urgency. There was a general orderly traffic flow. On the Monday, complete chaos. There was no traffic flow to the crowd, just a mass of people with no idea where they were going, and doing so quickly and impatiently. Not that there's anything wrong with people who don't memorize the park or move quickly to maximize their time, it just changes the nature of a crowd and makes it feel more crowded.

I've heard several times that Mondays and Tuesdays have replaced the weekends, at least in summer, as the busiest days. I don't think it's an AP factor, we go on weekends. I think it's a phenomenon caused by "common knowledge". The "common knowledge" is that the weekends are the busiest. It's been true for decades. So people have gotten clever and instead of going on weekends, wait until they can take a Monday, or Monday and Tuesday off, and "beat the crowds". Well, now enough people have figured out that trick so that Monday and Tuesday have become the most crowded days. Just a theory, but it makes sense to me.