So this comes from Moth, who runs the Rumor Tracker over on WDWMagic, and they've just shared some interesting details they've heard:
Assuming Romulus doesn't bomb, a familiar Alien might begin terrorizing Tomorrowland's theater-in-the-round.
Well this has been a batch of news and rumors for this week already, hasn't it?
That sounds way, way too good to be true.
I'd love to see it, but I can't believe it. If (some) parents thought Alien Encounter was too much (and that one had comic relief!), bringing in the Xenomorph seems impossible to me.
So, it's no secret that Alien Encounter is one of my favorite attractions (and easily my favorite defunct attraction to this day), there's zero doubt that I would love to see this, and there's an interesting angle when it comes to the scariness. The attraction would finally be associated with something that is generally known for being scary, and that's to its benefit. I'll explain.
(As a preface, most of the general public don't pay attention to any warning signs etc. But there are a few things they can notice...)
When it came to Alien Encounter, those who got too scared can fall back on the excuse that they didn't know it was supposed to be scary. After all, it's not based off any property they know and if you looked at the sign the thing you see the most is "Alien Encounter", not the full name which had TERROR in it. (Yes, the preshow should've given them a hint it's not cute and cuddly, but once again to the blissfully unaware, they're not expecting something like this to have much bite.)
That leads to Stitch's Great Escape, where the audience actually had a leg to stand on with their complaints. It's a Stitch attraction, they thought it was going to be something fun, why the heck is this so scary for its target audience?! You can't blame the audience on this one, they see Stitch and think it's going to be perfectly fine for their kids. Meanwhile Disney was trying to make a kid-friendly show out of something where the core elements needed to make the show work are very unfriendly to kids, it was a piñata full of spiders scenario, which makes it entirely plausible that SGE got more complaints than Alien Encounter ever did during its lifetime.
Which brings us to the Alien franchise/Xenomorph, if they have an attraction with that IP, there's gonna' be a good chunk of the audience who'll immediately know this is supposed to be scary because of the IP, and from that association it'll be a lot easier for them to decide if it's for them or not. Yes, there'll still be the blissfully unaware who'll go on and/or take their kids, but when they complain it's too scary, it'll be met with a collective "What did you expect?" or "Why the heck did you take your kids on this?!". Effectively turning it into a "That's a
you problem."
When you have a very well-known Horror/Scary IP attached to an attraction like this, it can do a rather nice job of naturally weeding folks out at first glance.
