I tend to agree, but don't think the Safari is a particularly egregious case of this - much like with Dinosaur, I think the premise is that your guide on the safari was the one who needed to go and "save" the elephant and we as tourists were just along with the ride because we were in the vehicle. I don't think there was a concept that we were doing anything to rescue the elephant.
To be fair to Disney, I think Universal is much more guilty of overusing and/or ineffectually using that trope.
You may be right and I'm just misremembering it a bit.
A lot of whether that trope works does come down to what kind of ride it is, how the riders' presences are acknowledged (or not), etc. Like, I get it being used for something like Buzz Lightyear in MK or Mario Kart in Universal; with the option to fire weapons it means you're no longer "passive" on those rides, so some kind of acknowledgement of us at the end makes sense. And yeah, stuff like Dinosaur or Spider-man at Islands of Adventure have us along for the ride in an intense situation, but nobody's acting like "YOU saved the Iguanodon!" or "YOU stopped the Sinister Six!", as Spidey even goes out of his way to tell us we're taking a senseless risk and then saves us along the way. And obviously there's the originator of this concept - the old Fantasyland dark rides where you're supposed to assume the role of Snow White, Peter Pan, Alice, Mr. Toad, etc., so if the ride addresses you in some way it's because you're supposed to be seeing it through your main character's eyes.
But yeah, when it turns into something like the new Tiana ride, where we, the riders, are asked to go find the band, it really feels pretty silly at that point, given we're not, y'know...doing anything. Even ones where they're telling us we're on our way somewhere (e.g. Frozen Ever After) strike me as odd; the ride is now projecting an active purpose onto my decision to go on it, rather than working around the fact that, again, I'm just some tourist who's here to experience stuff, not someone who knows the main characters or has some kind of invitation to meet them. I'm trying to recall which Universal rides I was on that gave me that same feeling; might've been something like implying we had anything to do with stuff working out at the Gringott's ride? I can definitely believe that Universal's guilty of the same stuff (or more of it!), but I only had a day there about five years ago, so I'm probably just not remembering well.
