I never understood why they wouldn't do this due to its following, but would bring back the original Tiki Room?!? I recall that JIYI was axed due to a sponsorship issue I think. Maybe this plays into it.
The 1999 Journey Into Your Imagination was axed because people hated it. The original Journey Into Imagination was the one axed due to the sponsorship issues. Here's why:
"In 1997, Fujifilm, (Kodak's biggest rival at the time) came to Disney with an offer: make Journey into Imagination into a thrill ride that had nothing to do with imagination. Kodak's sponsorship contract was almost up, and Fujifilm knew that when the contract ran out, Disney would need someone to sponsor the building. Kodak, however, wished to stay with Disney and continue the contract. Kodak realized that in order to compete with Fujifilm, they too must come up with a new attraction to go into the building. Their proposal was to make Journey Into Imagination, already an E-Ticket attraction, into something more scientific. The ride would also be shorter and have cheaper special effects. At the time, Journey Into Imagination was the most expensive ride in Epcot to keep running, despite the fact that it got more visitors in a day than Epcot's flagship ride Spaceship Earth. The guests made it all worthwhile for Disney to keep it running, but Disney still wasn't satisfied with it. It was the most technologically advanced dark ride in history. A roller coaster would mean much more money to build and keep running, and they feared it wouldn't be nearly as popular as Journey Into Imagination. Therefore, by the end of 1997, Disney accepted Kodak's idea.
The new attraction opened in 1999, just in time for the Millennium Celebration. Fans went on the ride with eager hearts, but were dismayed to find that the Dreamfinder, a popular character from the previous ride, was gone. Furthermore, Figment, another popular character, only made cameo appearances until his short dialogue at the end of the ride. They felt that Disney tried too hard to make it like The Imagination Institute and the ride was just a lame tie-in with Honey, I Shrunk The Audience . Some fans became even more outraged when they saw the new downstairs Image Works which focused on visual imagination was really just an ad for Kodak.
Fans decided to take action and boycotted the new imagination ride and Kodak Film. This campaign proved better than the Mr. Toad's Wild Ride protest, mainly because of pressure from Kodak. By the end of 2001, Disney closed the ride and decided to replace it with something more kid-friendly, just in time for the 100 Years of Magic Celebration, bringing Figment back into a more prominent role."