You guys are demonstrating exactly why they changed the instructions.
Some tanks will get the same reading on both kits though.
For the calcium kit, magnesium interferes with the results, so I suspect the cause for some tanks to read the same and other to read higher on the new kit is because of Mg interference (or not).
The same rings true for the KH kit - on most tanks you can use anywhere from 2-5 drops of the indicator and it won't change the results, but on some tanks it will change the results which is the reason for their changes. I'm not sure what is interfering in the KH kit.
I'm not sure of the reason for the change in the Mg kit. The time to swirl is so the calcium has time to be bound out of the solution so it doesn't interfere with the Mg reading.
The colored drops/powder in the kits is an indicator dye, and as long as there is a minimum amount of indicator in the test compared to the element you're testing, then it doesn't matter how much of it you use until you get to the point where you're diluting the test with the number of drops. Haha!