Just out of curiosity how does the attraction hurt the franchise?
I thought the ride was nice I agree its not the best ride disney has ever produced but I think its a little harsh to say it hurts the mermaid franchise, if anything its bringing relevance to it again (Trust me my niece was going wild to see Ariel "Swim with Sebastian")
The five year old Ariel super fan in our family doesn't really care for the ride in DCA. Beats me . . . we do Ariel's Grotto (Princess meet and greet during lunch) each time, ask her if she wants to go on Mermaid, she usually rides it once, isn't super excited and declines to ride it again even though there are 5 minute waits. She has half a dozen Ariel/Ursula dolls and all the Little Mermaid DVDs including the sequel.
I think that MK's Mermaid's rockwork probably helps the ride a lot as the Mermaid facade in DCA is so freakin' cheap! I know that they wanted it to match with Paradise Pier (which is odd as Paradise Pier is uber cheap and tacky), and that it is supposed to look like old buildings that house aquariums, but it's really just a big ugly Barnes and Noble style box construction, with a smattering of details that are tacky.
I just find Mermaid so un-magical. Ariel looks OK, Ursula looks good, but the ride doesn't transport me anywhere, it reminds me of the Mickey Mouse Revue they used to have in MK, which was shuttered. Fake plastic fish, cheap ending scenes (cheap second half?), screens used for three different scenes (I don't think screens work well in Fantasyland rides), and minimal details elsewhere throughout the ride, the fake cardboad cut Ursula . . . so much could have been done and it wasn't. Plus, they just recycled the omnimover system instead of building something a lor more open so you could see around you, not that there is a lot to see.
Maybe MK's Mermaid helps the franchise a little bit, but in DCA the combination of Ariel's Grotto (princess dining) and Mermaid in DCA is so tacky and sad, IMHO, as Ariel doesn't deserve to live in such a . . . rundown neighborhood. Paradise Pier, is awful, they have a rundown Pier area with a net full of fake dead fish and the area looks just horrible.
Mermaid has to be the first attraction at a Disney with zero-wait that I wouldn't really be interested in seeing again! I'd gladly ride Pirates, HM, Small World even Mickey's Fun Wheel if there was five minute wait, but not Mermaid. I feel they did what they thought was the bare minimum for such a ride, which would be three advanced animatronics
and every single last detail was done cheaply after this. Scuttle's a great character, but he really grates on the nerves with his loudish/clueless blabbering at the beginning of a ride that never took itself seriously, and his ending speech which is easy to miss and heartless.
I would like to see Mermaid's rockwork in MK at some point. MK's Mermaid (based on the video I saw), has a *much* better submersion scene, and so much better lighting on Ursula. At DCA Flotsam and Jetsom didn't seem to work during the first year, you could hear their voice, but not see them, and they messed around with black lights on the entrance to Ursula's lair. Ursula is good, but they could have done so much more with a second Ursula elsewhere in the ride, and I would say that Ursula is too close to the clamshells, such that it is obvious she's an animatronic and oblivious to the presence of the guests. Small things like this seem to add up to drain the magic away.
