Patti is allowed to have her opinions and it's always fun to hear snark. Lord knows she went through it with Sunset Boulevard, so I'm not surprised she'd speak frankly about how little she cares for Phantom or ALW.
...but she's wrong. Sure, plenty of people have seen it, but plenty of people haven't. Heck people in NY still haven't seen it because they thought "it would always be there!" We've all heard that refrain from folks these last few days.
And people rewatch classic movies all the time don't they? Or discover them for the first time? So, how is that different from going to see Phantom, even though it opened 35 years ago?
Patti starred in Gypsy, which has been performed so many times any self-respecting theatre geek knows the score inside out and backwards. So? Are people not supposed to enjoy it anymore?
I think at the end of the day, Patti has her own ideas about how Broadway should work. Didn't she speak about "term limits"? Yeah.