The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure attempted to develop a "Little Mermaid" dark ride for Disneyland Paris and Magic Kingdom parks. Early plans for Tokyo DisneySea and Hong Kong Disneyland also included this ride. None of these versions were actually built, although a computer-generated ride-through animatic was included on the Platinum Edition DVD of "The Little Mermaid" in 2006. Disney later went on to design and build a different version of the attraction for Disney California Adventure, as part of an effort to revitalize that park in the 2000s. The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure opened on June 3, 2011 in an area of Paradise Pier
The Little Mermaid (1989 film) shots failed because the machine was reputedly in dilapidated condition. The multiplane shots were instead photographed at an outside animation camera facility. "The Little Mermaid" was the last Disney feature film to use the traditional hand-painted cel method of animation. Disney's next film, "The Rescuers Down Under", used a digital method of coloring and combining scanned drawings developed for Disney by Pixar called CAPS/ink & paint (Computer Animation Production System), which would eliminate the need for cels, the multiplane camera, and many of the optical effects used for the last time in "Mermaid". A CAPS/ink & paint prototype was used