That's my take with dark rides! Enjoy it for what it is and don't let a wrongly positioned prop ruin your day! Perhaps we're not so different after all.
I'd 100% agree that nobody needs to know a dark ride's stats & trivia to enjoy it either. But you're conflating different things aren't you.
It's the difference between a stage show with actors forgetting their lines and effects not working, compared to something done with great timing and edge. Or a meal cooked lazily with no flavour – still a bolognese isn't it, but do it properly and it's something very different, which you don't need to be a connoisseur to enjoy!
You can enjoy a declining attraction for what it's worth, yes, but how bad does it need to get before something's done? If even for the sake of VFM of the entrance ticket? And boy are most dark rides in the UK older than 5 years totally busted, it's far more than just a stray prop these days!
And then, when you
do know the sheer efforts & hours of work that go into producing a dark ride, the fact that Mr Screwdriver in his lunch break decides he can do it better and changes all the set up, or a big effect needs servicing but gets abandoned because "no one will notice", is pretty silly. It objectively ends up with a very cheapened product in the long run. The small details do add up too, average public in the queue for the Imperial Leather Bubbleworks when I worked there would often mention (unprompted) how well they remember the old smell (seriously! of all things – because it was good).
The better the audio & lighting, the more unaware guests will be that its even there, and the more they are taken in for a fun theatrical ride. It makes a solid difference, there's a whole field of work behind this, but it costs money for something not operationally critical, so of course it gets cut when big corporations run parks. Reinvesting in existing attractions for quality's sake is squarely not Merlin's strategy and it shows in more ways than just declining dark rides.
And yes, lacking show maintenance has been the case since Tussauds ran the parks too, if not quite as bad as we've known more recently.
Um how do I bring this back on topic.. Oh yeah Wickerman looks like its effects have been more solidly built to be more maintainable than most the cheapo effects of late (see The Smiler), and putting a different team in charge of maintaining them will surely make a big difference.
