They've done this new way (fewer corrals, more per corral, multiple wave starts) for a while now - I've been through it for Dark Side 2016 and 2017, W&D 2017, and Dopey 2018. I've been in the second-to-last corral for each and it's worked fine. DS and WDW Half/Full worked the best, IMO: they did many waves for our corral of 6-7,000. W&D was less successful with only a couple waves for 6,000 people. Since that was the one-off and they went back to multiple, smaller waves for marathon weekend, hopefully they saw that fewer, bigger waves wasn't so great.
FWIW I refuse to take part in the Hunger Games at the front of a corral and have been starting from the middle to back of my corral at all of these races - no issues at all.
That's great to hear - thanks! Makes me feel much better. We have a local race where there aren't any corrals at all, and though I love the race itself, the "jockeying for position" before it starts is really annoying to me.