Slyfox I am so glad that this worked out for you.
Please come back and update as to when all your points show up and how getting Seven Stars works out.
Like everyone's mentioned, once you get Seven Stars you'll get a trip that you have to use by 1/31/19 so if you haven't already you should start thinking about where you want to go and when as you'll need to get that booked ASAP once your status hits.

As for the crowds - I am surprised and not surprised. On the forums I browse I didn't see much discussion of this except for here. I think that Seven Stars not having the generous room benefits it used to maybe made it less lucrative a play. To the extent I have pursued promotions I have found that popularity is completely unpredictable. I've seen enormous lines all over the casino for token gifts not worth the effort of carrying the item to my car, and then relatively deserted venues for 15x RC multipliers. I'm glad it worked out for you and you were able to play what you planned to and keep your OOP cost relatively low for the amount of play you needed to put in.