Many shuls drag out the davening/hakafos on Simchas Torah and finish very late. IMHO this is not working and people are starting to vote with their feet. If you look around the shuls you will see a core group of people who are dancing and everyone else is basically hanging out waiting for hakafos to finish. I have been davening Vasikin for the past few years on Simchas Torah and every year the minyan keeps getting bigger as more and more people do not want to be stuck in shul until 1,2, or even 3PM. This year the minyan was enormous with people coming from many different shuls. In addition, shuls adopt a number of questionable halachic practices to do this:
1. Making Kiddush before Mussaf and eating more then a כביצה
2. Not davening Musaf before mincha gedola and therefore getting involved in a question of which should come first mincha or musaf
3. Not davening musaf before 7 hours (around 12:30 this year in Israel).
These are not the biggest issues but why get involved.
In many yeshivas (including my son's) they have a much better system. They start davening earlier and have short hakafos (max 5-10 minutes each) and finish davening by 11. People can then go home and eat and enjoy the Yom Tov. They then daven mincha a little early (4PM) and have hakafos from after mincha until Yom Tov is over, approximately 2 hours.
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