Certainly. As I said, I saw the same pattern for my recent trip, which was not during a slow period. Perhaps someone has actually tracked this over time, though that sounds awful so I hope not. Haha
But we're also talking mostly about guests at Disney hotels. As I understand it the number of guests in the hotels doesn't vary by huge amounts across the year, as far more people are coming from off-site than on property. It's definitely fewer hotel guests, but perhaps not dramatically so. These numbers are from a couple years ago.
Every year around this time I get comments from people trying to book one of my recommended December weeks that say something like “all the Disney World hotels are booked, so how can these be lower-crowd weeks?” The short answer I always give is that this happens every year. Disney World hotel...
yourfirstvisit.net
Also the tiers open up availability to the non-Slinky rides as people are forced choose Muppets or Little Mermaid instead of Rockin Rollercoaster or Tower of Terror. As Nickys mentioned, day-of availability at HS seems to have greatly improved since they moved all the good rides to Tier 1.
