Difference is Walt was previewing things the public had never seen before, like Audio-Animatronics. Or shortly after his death, Pirates of the Caribbean. Seems to me that Disney's shown us every AA in the Mermaid ride and a little something from every scene.
Walt actually showed America the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction almost a full two years before he passed away.
The episode of
Wonderful World of Color where Walt walks the Disneyland Ambassador through most of the scale model of Pirates of the Caribbean, and shows the big model of New Orleans Square and describes the ride and new land, was aired in living color on NBC on January 3rd, 1965. Walt died almost two years later, December 15, 1966.
They have shown quite a few of the major AA's for DCA's Mermaid in recent months, in living color on the Disney Parks Blog. But there is much of the ride we haven't seen yet.
There are 10 major scenes in the DCA ride, and the WDW version should hew very close to it, if not an identical setup once a rider hits the loading belt.
Little Mermaid ride map, as currently exhibited in DCA's Blue Sky Cellar Preview Center
We've seen the Ariel AA's in the workshop from Scene 4, Scene 5. We've also seen workshop views of Ursula from Scene 6. We've seen a brief shot of the Eric and Ariel AA's in uncompleted versions of Scene 8, and a brief shot of the Triton AA in an uncompleted Scene 10. And there have been a few different shots of the big room that Scene 5 takes place in, in a very unfinished form.
We have yet to see anything from Scenes 2, 3, 7 or 9, and nothing of the loading/unloading area. And what we've seen of Scenes 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 has been single AA's in the workshop, or small glimpses of uncompleted rooms still under construction.
Considering all that, in this Internet age, I think the Disney Parks Blog people have done a pretty good job of providing specific shots and information about the ride, without really letting anyone see anything approaching a finished format. Pretty smart, when you think about it, because we feel like we've been given these fabulous sneak peeks, and yet we really haven't seen much of the ride itself.
