Not to off-track, but as far as the Hoth AT-ST being removed, while this is coming late... pictures of the original ILM walker prop surfaced a couple years back from a collector in Japan and were shared selectively with some model builders on a replica model forum. A bunch of guys (myself included) have recreated the Hoth walker in 1:1 scale including the working stop-motion armature the original had and 99% of the kit parts used on the original. The picture set that was shared in confidence showed the original model in great detail. I have plans to shoot some stop-motion scenes with mine in the future, but it will probably be some time after the revisited release so it would be coming too late. It's too bad the scene was ruined, and I do agree on its short cameo seeming a bit out of place without it included.

Here's one of the builds by a man named Lee Ralph... thought some might find this of interest considering the original prop had all the details ripped off of it after TESB for reference when they were creating the go-motion Jedi walkers.