What is the random string I am seeing when I use get_query_var?

This is a symptom of having a % character in your meta query value. Since 4.8.3 % characters are being escaped (actually replaced by a semi random string) and should be unescaped before executing the sql query.

You should check with the plugin author what would be the best way to handle it, but in your specific case I would say that slight redesign to your code would be a better solution than any unescaping code. LIKE is an expensive operation better be avoided and based on your UI you can just make a strict compare of values instead.

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