Re: the Brickers' experience on Day 1 of G+, it's interesting but really doesn't show much other than that for the average solo guest, G+ is a more favorable experience. First and foremost, they are each a party of 1, which is unusual in WDW. Touring with 3, 4, 5 or more people on a trip to WDW is a totally different experience. And yes, if you are a seasoned WDW vet with several dozen (or hundreds) of trips under your belt and have a Magic Kingdom "Spidey-sense" like Tom Bricker, and you have the competitive nature of Tom Bricker, you can get close to the G experience, and that's on a day rated as crowd level of 3 by Touring Plans.
Regarding the different ways to tour WDW, it's all over the place and it's always been all over the place. Some prefer rope drop, some prefer rolling in later. Some prefer park hopping, others don't. Some get up early, rope drop, and stay all day, all out effort to be in the parks. Some rope drop and take a mid-day break at the hotel pool, then go back or hop to another park. Some depends on party size and age. I have my current preference, but none of them are wrong.
However, the way Disney runs their parks can sometimes give advantages to certain styles of touring. This has been true from the various rules around paper FP, FP+ and now Genie+. Everyone needs to decide if the way G+ and ILL are going to drive optimal touring is acceptable for them. Some will decide no and others will decide yes, both due to touring style factors as well as cost factors and planning factors.
Some will balk at the overall prices of a WDW vacation in 2022, regardless of the way they tour. Some will decide it's not worth it due to the way they prefer to tour. The reality is that if enough customers decide this current overall model is acceptable, WDW will continue on this way. If enough decide it doesn't work well enough for them and their touring style, then WDW will be forced to change in a variety of ways.
In full disclosure, we are an every 5 years family. We like to rope drop, take a break 2-5pm at our WDW resort (1 hour swim, 1 hour nap, 1 hour for relaxing in the room and getting ready for the evening). We are very wait-in-line adverse, and prefer to optimize and give up sleep in the morning to instead relax/nap in the middle of the day and use the parks' crowded afternoon time to take a break. We will then hop to a park that is open late with fireworks with lesser crowds (almost always Epcot) for the late afternoon/evening.
Our last visit was 2016 and our next trip is a MLK 4-day weekend in January, and the plan is MK/EP Friday, HS/EP Sat and HS/EP Sunday. As we don't visit that often, we will likely use G+ and ILL. We prefer to stay at an Epcot area resort for easy walking access to both HS and EP, the parks we will be in the most. We haven't been to HS since 2013, way before GE and we want to experience the GE rides with a minimum of wait. I don't like the extra costs, the number of convoluted steps (park ressies and limited hopping, dated tickets, price increases) or the general way Chapek has decided to run the parks, and those things will definitely impact our thoughts on future visits to both WDW and DL now that the experience has been mostly homogenized between both coasts. Our son is almost 14 and our optimal way of touring has been and will be altered by his growth and our desires as older people as time goes on. It could be our last visit, but it may not. It all depends on how management steers the ship, which lately is not in an encouraging direction.