My assumption is that his post had some typos in there, I'm guessing he meant to say the original longer Mine Train layout with the extra show scenes. And unless ford isn't aware Mermaid is pretty much a 1:1 clone of DCA's (I would assume he is), i suspect his comment was actually referring to the vastly more ambitious suspended Mermaid ride pitched by Tony Baxter in the early 90's but never built, I think intended for Disneyland Paris originally (there's a CGI concept video on youtube showing the ideas).
That would indeed add a couple of fantastic new rides. The quality of the new offerings would have been very good, but that still wouldn't address Fantasyland's lack of ride quantity (and the lines wouldn't be pretty, they're already out of control as it is). Even had Mermaid and Mine Train achieved their full potential, several more dark rides are desperately needed to more evenly spread out the crowds.
There's also still plenty of room to do this. Just offhand there are at least three places I can think of offhand being squandered by unimportant things that could be put to good use. Choosing to build a new dark ride in place of the old Snow White building instead of squandering the space on a meet and greet would have been a good start. There's also a sizable piece of land behind Village Haus and Small World. I don't wish to derail this into armchair imagineering, but i'll just mention Beauty and the Beast as an easy and obvious ride for this location. The area is next to the BATB area already and you can put the entrance of the queue next to the same Be Our Guest entrance, people already approach that area thinking there's supposed to be a ride there anyways and are disappointed to find otherwise. And then of course there's all the space being squandered by the circus tents, there's enough space there to fit another clone of Mermaid with room to spare. You could actually fit two or three smaller Snow White or Pooh sized dark rides in this area alone.
