I am also an 11-year Reddit vet making the move. Welcome! This isn't my first Fediverse experience, but definitely my most promising (I don't really tweet, so Mastodon is kind of whatever to me). This and kbin have been great.
I was also part of the Voat migration. I never left Reddit, as I didn't mind them cracking down on some of the more questionable content, but I did check Voat out. I wasn't part of the cesspool that showed up there, but I did enjoy participating in some of the smaller communities. I think what didn't work was that it just got stale. Same reason I didn't like Snapzu or some of the other "Reddit alternatives." Even larger communities were just... dead. What made Reddit work was that everyone was there, and even small, niche communities had active users.
I love Beehaw. It was the first general instance that was suggested all over the place, even the top on join-lemmy.org for a long time. I respect what you're doing, and that's why I joined. I like the local communities and cohesiveness. And I know it's just a few instances right now (pending revisits), but I'm worried that might increase. That, and DotWorld is growing quickly and has a lot of the 1:1 communities popping up to match beloved subreddits.
It hasn't made me rethink being a Beehaw member at all, because I do respect the ethos and understand, but it also means I have to make another account to feel like I can truly interact fully across the Fediverse. But between my Beehaw account, my kbin I've decided to leave within the kbin verse for the moment, making a new one will mean 3 accounts I've got to keep up with (really 4 with the NSFW-only one). It's not difficult to do, especially toggling between them in Jerboa, but it kind of defeats the bigger purpose and unification. Just a ramble to vent. Like I said, I get it. Hope everyone has a good rest of their day.