Not to be debbie downer but IMHO the water event brought GPS spoofers to the water's edge looking for Lapras/dratini. What the end result was: what once was a string of gyms that had daily turnover turned into towers. I assume the spoofers took over the gyms and have not moved out.
that aside: it was fine. I still caught everything I could hoping for high IV, lvl 30 mons.