You know, that's entirely possible and that week probably did affect the week we attendedI believe this year had a lot of rain in those first few weeks, so I assume any local RoF folks may have gone on those nights when the weather looked good which would add to those nights' crowds.
I still think overall they are going to have a "Disney problem" here soon where passes need to be seriously evaluated
This is what we did too. Pop in for a few hours, do a couple houses, then pop out...It's honestly the best way to do itI got the 10 houses in over 4 visits as we do not need to make sure we get everything in in one night.