Simply said: If a mysql host, say, allows only 10 connections at the same time and you have 11 visitors at the time, that will exceed since every visitor has its own instance. According to the docs the default values is normally 151.
I checked and our MySQL server allows 151 connections. So that does not seem to be the issue.
Also we do not use dynamic albums as of now and both options you mentioned are disabled.
Oh yeah.. I get that max_user_connections error when viewing the sub-albums of an album that had 23 albums in it. My max_user_connections value is set to 15 on my server. Seems related to the thumbnail generation as on the first view, a couple are not created.
In my case Options > Gallery > Gallery behaviour > Show all subalbum thumbs was already unchecked. I'll have to install 1.5.4 and go from there. I do have "Cache processing worker limit" set to 3.
I have tested the support build since June 23rd now and the error did not occur again on my site.
That being said I found one very similar warning message in the debug log:
{19018:Thu, 11 Jul 2019 22:09:41 GMT}
WARNING: mysqli_connect(): (08004/1040): Too many connections in /zp-core/functions-db-MySQLi.php on line 30
mysqli_connect called from db_connect (functions-db-MySQLi.php [30])
from require_once (functions-basic.php [185])
from require_once (functions.php [18])
from include (index.php [14])
from index.php [44]
Edit: This might very well be some hiccup on the hoster end. So unless someone else experiences similar warnings, please don't overrate this.