Someone on Twitter pointed out the reports of them planning on cloning Everest seem really redundant with Roaring Rapids's similar storyline. It even has the same "You see the monster moving in shadow, drop and see the beast in animatronic form" show scenes. Thing is though, Everest was better at building suspense and paced out the monster encounters accordingly.
Roaring on the other hand compresses all of that into the middle of the show and you just escape past some water phenomena. The whirlpool effect is pretty cool, but I'm almost wondering if it would be possible to have Q'araq's head peeking from the center and giving the beast more of a supernatural force of nature edge and add more "You're being hunted" tension.
Still the best river rapids ride Disney has built all things considered...