I would say make sure you know the routes characters take and make an effort to keep to those routes if it is important to you. For example, on our first trip in 2020, we hardly saw any characters. But in MK, we spent a long time in fantasyland, tomorrowland and adventureland in HS we spent a lot of time in Toy Story land (DS wanted to ride TSMM over and over), and in epcot we spent most of the time in future world so we really weren't on the calvalcade routes much. We also kept waiting in ride line after ride line and so had less time to just explore like we did before when we had FPs and had downtime between them. Next trip in 2020, I made more of an effort to do fewer rides and linger on the cavalcade routes and we definitely saw more.
They only do one party on the seating on each side, but that does mean you'll be facing across from another family, who may or may not feel entitled to take off their masks since no CMs can see them there to enforce it. That's what happened to us. So it's not crowded like it used to be with them packing people in standing room only, but pooly designed from a covid safety standpoint.