I don't believe that they've exploited the Indianna Jones/Dinsoaur ride systems to their fullest. Here you have vehicles that can speed up, slow down, go forwards, backwards, or hop up and down, in any combination. You can shoot them through fast turns like a roller coaster, or slow them to a crawl for a dark ride, in the same attraction. You can make audiences of all types happy.
Indianna Jones is a fantastic ride, filled with special effects, AA's, sensory/psychological thrills, and motion-based thrills. Dinosaur, while not quite as inventive, also uses all of these to good effect. But why only 2 rides like this? I think that it could have revolutionized the dark ride genre, given the chance, but 10 years and only 2 rides*? That's terrible.
Imagine the possibilities, with the right immersive environment, realistic AA's, a good story, and high-speed elements, you can do ANYTHING with that ride. And the vehicle definitely "puts you in the story" in a way that a slow moving boat or omnimover doesn't. Why have they squandered it?
*yes, i know that TDS has a near-clone of Indy
It seems that the enormous cost of these attractions ensures that there will only ever be a handful of them. As dark rides and animatronics alike have become more sophisticated, they've also become considerably more expensive to construct and I imagine that's why we see so few of them. Were it built today, absent of the nostalgia surrounding it, an attraction likes Pirates or Haunted Mansion would be criticized for its animatronics' limited ranges of motion and stiff movements. Audiences won't accept anything less than state-of-the-art technology and that comes at a price; both figuratively and literally.
Modern animatronics are nothing less than industrial robots; the same kind you'd expect to see assembling a car or a microchip. Can you buy one of
those at Home Depot? They're far removed from the 'simple' (i.e., groundbreaking) technology exhibited by Fritz and Pierre and exhibit a level of control and fluidity in movement that requires extensive software and hardware support. It is never simply a matter of telling some servo somewhere to move back and forth to get the character to wave or walk or turn from side to side. There is quite a bit more going on behind the scenes and, as I'm known to rant about it, misunderstanding that is indicative of our cultural unappreciation for the amazing work that engineers do.
The late 80s represent that last significant wave of attractions that rely on this technology to tell their story. Even then, it seems as if those attractions --
The Great Movie Ride,
Maelstrom, and
Splash Mountain -- work with animatronic figures, not because of their cutting edge technology, but because of their implementation.
In
The Great Movie Ride, animatronic figures recreate seens from America's favorite passive activity, watching movies. Also, because the subject matter of each scene is, in some way, an entry in our cultural dictionary, the notion of altering or somehow involving the audience in the scene is uncomfortable. Also consider that Margaret Hamilton animatronic is even today considered among the most sophisticated and life-like ever built and its role in the show. Especially when compared to the other scenes represented in the attraction, that figure exhibits by necessity the greatest energy and immediacy to the audience.
Maelstrom deals almost exclusively with mythological creatures about which most western audiences have few preconceived notions. As with their own traditionally animated characters, Maelstrom represented an opportunity for Disney artists to conceive a unique representation of the archetypes represented by Norwegian folk tales. Animatronics provide to the trolls an immediacy (similar to the notion mentioned above) that cannot be recreated by other technologies, underscoring their volatile, unpredictable nature.
Splash Mountain, finally, exists at Disneyland almost entirely because it was able to recycle animtronics from America Sings. Without that benefit, it's plausible that the attraction would've ended up as something differently entirely from what we know today.
I believe that there is still a place and audience for passive entertainment and that it does not represent lazy storytelling at all. In fact, passive storytelling is far more difficult to accomplish successfully than is interactivity, but that increased challenge is rewarded by increased loyalty. Compare films to video games to see exactly how the dichotomy plays out in another medium.
The question going forward is whether we expect from the company that they produce each generation's Star Wars or if they produce its Doom, Counterstrike or Halo -- games that have seen insane popularity, but comparatively little loyalty. I bet you know a few people who still love Star Wars as much today as they did when they first saw it, but I doubt you'll run across too many folks who're still playing Doom.