Until the mid to late nineteenth century, art has had a set of criteria that defines it as good or bad. These mostly focus on the subject matter (religious, historical, mythological, portraits, landscapes, and still life all considered good subject matter; I believe I've ranked them from most to least valuable properly) and the quality of art (realistic proportions of people, proper perspective, detail, brush strokes, color, etc.). Usually there's also meaning behind what is displayed for art's primary goal is to communicate with the viewer (for example, in a still life painting there may be a skull to represent death). While these specific standards mostly apply to paintings and sculptures, all mediums of art, whether that be music, poetry, cinema, or theme parks, are still held to specific standards. Subject matter is universal across all mediums.
When it comes to theme parks, subject matter still holds great importance. It's what separates Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln from Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout. One is look back on America's history and one of our greatest presidents, the other is based on a low brow franchise. Whether or not someone prefers the thrills of Mission Breakout doesn't change the fact it is an objectively inferior attraction to Mr. Lincoln on subject matter alone.
Like a painting is judged for its quality of brush strokes, there's also the objective quality standards for theme park attractions. The main four criteria here are the narrative flow, ride vehicles/system, mediums used, and role of guest.
With storytelling for theme park attractions, the best flow for dark rides is the three act structure, much like a film. That's because there tends to be a linear narrative. This is easiest to see in Pirates of the Caribbean. You begin with the small hints of things to come (bayou), a bit more explicit (skeletons in the caverns), and finally everything is revealed (living, breathing pirates). This formula is also used on Tower of Terror (queue/library, mirror, hallway), Splash Mountain ("How Do Ya Do?," "Laughing Place," "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah"), Haunted Mansion (foyer/stretching room, pre seance, post seance), and numerous other rides.
As stated, this structure only applies to narrative dark rides and not towards attractions like Autopia, Dumbo, or the Tea Cups.
The second criteria of ride vehicles/system is how well the ride system represents the property or attraction. Sticking with Pirates, it makes sense to have it be a boat ride as pirates sail the seas. The ride vehicle goes along with the story. With Indiana Jones, that's a franchise about adventure so it makes sense the ride vehicle would be an off-roading jeep. Tower of Terror is a story about an elevator, so naturally the ride vehicle should be an elevator. Star Tours is based on a franchise about space travel so it makes sense to have a flight simulator as the ride system with the gritty Starspeeder 3000 as the vehicle.
Mediums is really just the difference between full sets with advanced audio animatronics, static figures, blacklit plywood, and screen based attractions (that's from best to worst). Pirates of the Caribbean, which is primarily full sets filled with audio animatronics, is an objectively better attraction than Toy Story Midway Mania, which is all screens. Having audio animatronics and full sets creates a more realistic and believable environment just as well proportioned and proper perspective creates a better painting.
You can even get into the craftsmanship of each items within the medium. With screen based rides, they tend to work best with physical environments on screen rather than CGI (compare Soarin to Soarin 2) and without actors. With audio animatronics you can judge them as sculptures. So on and so forth.
Lastly, there is the role of the guest. Again, Pirates of the Caribbean. This is a passive attraction. It's a leisurely cruise. This is how narrative attractions should be. Second is the rider is the main character but the ride does not interact with the rider (Fantasyland rides), third is the rider interacts with the ride (Astro Blasters), and worst is the ride interacts with the rider (Mission Breakout).
There are, of course, other simple ways to evaluate an attraction. These are things such as thematic consistency of an attraction in its land (a Pixar ride should be in a land about Pixar), thematic consistency within the attraction itself (blatant references to things outside the attraction should not exist within an attraction), how much fun an attraction is, etc.
I'm tired of typing so I'm just wrapping it up here, not fully developed. There other things I didn't even talk about like how theme parks are a visual medium so the stories should be told visually.
I should just write a book on this instead of cram everything into a post on an internet forum.
