When I started using Wanikani, I didn’t have a lifetime membership. If I ever got bored of studying kanji, or had other things to do, I would quit my membership, and so my reviews stopped piling up into my queue. Eventually, I decided to buy a lifetime membership, because even though I wasn’t always consistent in studying, I would always come back. I figured buying the lifetime membership would be cheaper than constantly paying monthly fees. Unfortunately, this resulted in my reviews piling up to an absurd degree if I don’t study them every single day. Last year, I took an online college course and put Wanikani on hold for a bit. As a result, I ended up with over 1000 reviews in my queue. It was a bit discouraging to come back to. I’m making good progress now with repaying my “debt” to the crabigator, but wouldn’t it be better to put a cap on how many reviews can pile up, so learners don’t get discouraged? Maybe to around 200 reviews or so?
You can always use vacation mode
Setting a cap for how many reviews can pile up would artificially extend the time between the reviews for items that were capped off. I know that this is the case for vacation mode as well, but at least you don’t come back to a mountain of reviews if you use it.
Yeah, I definitely understand the feeling, but having reviews piling up (or not) while taking an extended break means those words we’d learned to some extent already are much more likely to start to escape our brains. 
Regardless, while it can certainly be discouraging to see that number, I highly recommend ignoring it (and using a 3rd party WaniKani client app on a mobile device may help with that) and just taking it slow, knocking out a modest number of reviews each day (to avoid having them pile up again quickly in the future).
Heck, instead of stopping completely, why not just do, like, 5-10 a day? As long as you’re making progress, that’s all that matters. 
Adding onto that, it’s also wise to not do any lessons until the reviews are back in a reasonable amount again, because otherwise, the reviews won’t stop piling up.
Good point. New items come back so quickly… 
I was not aware that there was an option like that already. I suppose if I take a break again, that’s what I should do. Thanks!
5-10 lessons a day would not be enough for the number of reviews to start going down, unfortunately. 
I have been making good progress though, recently. I’m down to around 400-ish now.
You can activate it here: https://www.wanikani.com/settings/account
It would go down over time as long as you’re not doing new items, but certainly it may take longer than desired. Glad to hear you found what works for you and are making progress though! 