Lonni,
I see that the point has been answered multiple times here, but if you would like to understand how hard this is to do, with 300+ arrivals over 4 hours, when the real world airport can only handle 56 arrivals an hour, I hope you understand why the controller said that practice approaches
might not be available, take a look at this video. This is from one of the final controllers, and as you can see, there is very, very little space to squeeze in any more airplanes in here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19vigetDuTU23O7qd39KHywVdcndhi5_K/viewNow, I'd also like to point out that for this event, ZNY staffed a number of other alternative diversion fields, many all the way, all within a 15-20 minute flight of PHL. ABE, MDT, EWR, JFK and MORE had ATC, and every single one of them would probably be able to accommodate your request if you had asked for it.