The problem with Mermaid... there's no adaptation to the ride medium, at all. Imagineering thought that if you took a popular animated movie and recreated its scenes with animatronics, and then moved an omnimover through them, then you would have a successful ride... but that's just not it works. That's not even how successful movie-based rides work. The adaptation of the movie into ride form is so literal that it leaves nothing to interpretation or the unique experience of the ride format.
Think about every other successful movie-based ride... they all adapted the story to the ride experience in a way that served the ride first and the movie second. Rides like Mr. Toad's, Snow White, and Splash Mountain often barely captured the story of the movie at all. They were popular and memorable because they were well crafted ride experiences that focused more on mood or experience than on specific scenes, or even on the movie's plot in general. Because Mr. Toad's focused first on being a zany car ride, Snow White on spookiness and mood, Indiana Jones on peril and adventure, Peter Pan on the experience of flight, and Splash Mountain on the music and cheerful warmth of Song of the South, they worked regardless of one's familiarity with Disney movies and independently of any source material.
The Little Mermaid tries so hard to recreate the movie that its attempts to do so becomes the central focus of the attraction, and everyone's discussions of the ride focuses on whether it does so successfully or not. The strange truth is that the Little Mermaid actually retells the movie better than probably 90% of movie-based attractions. But that shouldn't be the point. No hour and a half movie can ever be recreated in a five minute format, not should it be. And that Little Mermaid spent all of its time/budget/space on doing so meant it had to forgo the things that dark rides are traditionally based on - placemaking, mood, and the fun of the experience. That's why I'm not hugely confident the refurb is actually going to really fix anything; sure, it's going to add more plot-based elements to try and tell the story better, but in the end it's still compressing a DVD anyone can watch at home into a CliffNotes format instead of offering a unique ride experience. As long as WDI worships its recent obsession with "story, story, story," I imagine they'll continue to miss the point.
