The major hurdle I can see to this is given the nature of the jungle cruise, the story and narrative of the skippers is what is the unique feature of the ride that you can exploit. Everything else is really handicapped. Take the animals for example? How do you reinvigorate the JC featuring pretend animals, when you have the AK and Safari ride now which didn’t exist when JC first opened? Any comparison between fake animals and live animals is going result in a “snooze” rating for the fakes.
As to animatronics the JC is rather unique in that it is basically geared as a dark water ride...but outdoors. This means all the newer features of your best dark water rides, the use of modern animatronics mixed with screen visuals, are subject to the rain and elements. Your never going to be able to recreate the WOW factor of the Navi River or say PotC in China in an outdoor setting.
The one unique feature of jungle cruise that no other ride has is 100% character interaction with a live person. The skipper brings to the ride something that should be leveraged to make the ride unique. Different skippers with slightly different roles/“scripts”/take on the ride help promote repeat ridability, with each trip being a bit different. It is this feature that I think the JC experience has to be built around. Anything else and the ride becomes a second best , it’s ok but X ride does this better.