No, it's not The Theme Park Version of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment...that's a totally different concept altogether.
- At one point on the Disneyland Railroad, between Tomorrowland and the Main Street Station, the train passes through a tunnel displaying stuffed wildlife in a model of the Grand Canyon followed by animatronic dinosaurs fighting in a lava pit. Like some other park attractions, Disney created these exhibits for the 1964 World's Fair and couldn't bear to part with them, but this is never explained by the train ride's narrator (nor is the tunnel mentioned aside from when you pass through it). The context might have been improved a little if they'd placed it somewhere near Frontierland, but it would still be jaw-droppingly random.
- Putting the Grand Canyon portion near Frontierland would have made some sense. The dinosaur portion, not so much.
- DLRR is pretty much an alternating sequence of tour bus - BLAM - tour bus - BLAM:
- Between the New Orleans Square and Toontown/Fantasyland stations, the train goes through Splash Mountain... the portion near the end, where all the Song of the South characters are gathered on a riverboat singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah. New Orleans ... riverboat ... I guess. It's still weird.
- Just after leaving Toontown/Fantasyland station the train passes by the Small World ride. Passengers who look on the opposite side will see a billboard that says "Agrifuture" and some potted plants. It's not especially big or showy, and is never mentioned in the ride's narration, though it's in a location that can't really be seen well from anywhere but the train.
- Near the end of "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride", there's a segment where you actually go to Hell. Yes, Hell. What's especially indefensible about it is that no such scene was in the cartoon that inspired it.
- The Journey Into Imagination pavillion at Epcot used to have this with the preshow at the Magic Eye Theater, back when it hosted the 3D movie Magic Journeys. The pavillion featured a ride with an Eccentric Mentor and his purple baby dragon Sidekick, who also oversaw the interactive playground upstairs, and the movie was about a kid's imaginary adventures. The preshow? A Sherman Brothers-written musical salute to the history of photography, aka an infomercial for pavillion sponsor Kodak!
- When Captain EO opened, a Space Opera film, the preshow changed... to a view of life from birth to adulthood through a 10-minute song. Like the last preshow, the preshow had a connection to Kodak.
- Iconic and impressively executed as it is...the attic scene from the Haunted Mansion. The rest of the ride follows a loose narrative where you visit the house, see alarming evidence of ghosts but not the ghosts themselves, participate in a seance, see the ghosts manifest and immediately drop any pretense of hostility to throw a party, and eventually join in the fun yourself. Between those last two bits, for some reason you take a side trip into the attic, where the ghost of a serial Black Widow is boasting about her dirty deeds. It's a complete tonal shift from the rest of the ride, is not foreshadowed in any way, and only gets a possible Call-Back at the very end, when another figure dressed as a bride bids you to "Hurry back..."
- This is actually the result of a thing that happened when they were planning it, where one of the ride designers had ideas for a comedic ride and another had ideas for a straight-played scary ride, so Uncle Walt decided that they should combine them.
- The Mine of Lost Souls, a dark ride at Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire, involves a mine said to be haunted by the Grim Reaper himself. However, one scene inexplicably takes place in an ancient Egyptian tomb—complete with a talking pharaoh bust, snakes, and a mummy. It's never mentioned again, and the mine's fictional "legend" in the queue line never alludes to this.
- At Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, just between the shark tunnel and Stingray Bay, visitors pass through a small room dedicated to... Abraham Lincoln. It includes such oddities as a wax statue, and a portrait of Lincoln made out of pennies. Why this exists in the middle of an aquarium is never explained.
- E.T. Adventure at various Universal Studios parks... as explained in the pre-show video involves the story of E.T. taking the park guests back to his home world to save it with magic. But if the pre-show video is not operating or skipped over for ride loading reasons, guests experience a ride opening that closely follows the original film with a woodland setting and FBI agents hunting down E.T. and the park guests... before jumping over to an alien planet with singing mushrooms, bright colors, and little tiny baby E.T.'s bouncing up and down on strings, followed by E.T. saying the guest's names if they provided it at the start of the ride.
