I just wanted to write an essay during my lunch break (lol). So a couple things:
I'm not incredibly sad about the remake news, except for one thing: the music. I think Splash at MK has some of the best queue music in the whole resort. The country / bluegrass covers of the songs in the movie are fantastic (I love the acoustic Zip version). I would hope Disney would keep the music playing in Frontierland, but it seems like they are going full on stupid and removing all of it anyways. That's the part that hurts the most. The ride is one thing, but the music is what I truly remember. Space Mountain still has the best queue music, but Splash's is so good at setting the theme.
Another thing I hadn't realized, since I haven't been to parks in 3 years (but I will in 2 weeks

), the entrance to Splash Mountain is on the complete other side of the train tracks. This is kind of a theming problem, but what I think could work is if they have two versions of music again, like current Splash between DL / MK. If they actually put in the effort (we know they won't) to cover some of the PATF songs in that same bluegrassy style, that would ease the theme a bit and I can totally see how they can do that as I'm listening to the songs right now.
So they can make this work if they try, but I'm wondering how difficult it will be to basically raze all of the interiors. It's sad that us Disney nerds know so much more about this stuff in comparison to the executives who run the company, I don't think they understand fully what they are doing.