Marking my spot... My husband has an annual conference at the DLand Hotel in early August. My girls & I usually accompany him & hit the parks. We’re likely to do the same in 2019.
We were there in the year Carsland opened, and it was an absolute zoo in the new land & the area close to it, but relatively moderate crowds in the other park, so we just checked out Carsland during early admission (we did & will again stay on site) and then avoided it the rest of the day, which was working well for us.
My strategy (honed in about a decade of yearly trips): figure out what the crowd patterns are beforehand (through trip reports here on the Disboard, Touringplans data, and nowadays the app’s wait time predictions) in the week’s leading up to our trip, paying particular attention to day-of-the-week patterns, FP-run-out times, and, if applicable, capacity-related closures. Then I use that information to craft a rather detailed plan that goes against those crowd patterns & tries to hit my kids’ favorites when they’re the least impacted. Both my girls are huge Star Wars fans, so there’s no way of skipping it altogether—they’d be heartbroken...
I would be shocked if they didn't make access to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge a separate ticket or, at a minimum, an expensive add-on to existing tickets.
I don’t think so, based on my experience with newly opened, high traffic attractions (no insider knowledge here, just educated guesses). My predictions: a super-expensive soft-opening event with special souvenirs for hard-core fans with disposable cash; a substantial price hike for Maxpass; a (hopefully disconnected) Fastpass type system, similar to WOC, to manage crowds. Perks for resort guests, if we’re lucky (e.g. after hours access to Star Wars rides).
Either way, I figure it’ll be quite intense, at least for the first couple of years.