Disney's ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter was one of the scariest rides ever opened in any amusement park, let alone a Disney Park, but it was actually a toned-down version of an even scarier original vision.
This ride started development not as an original attraction, but as a ride based on the iconic science fiction horror film Alien. Disney had already purchased the theme park rights to Alien for the Great Movie Ride, allowing them the chance to build this attraction.
The attraction would have utilized basically the same setup of the attraction that was actually built in the park, but the main difference would have been that the alien would have been the iconic Xenomorph from the franchise.
The entire design of the show and its format and backstory were all developed based on the original theme of the Alien franchise, with an evil company giving you a technology demonstration that went wrong and you were stuck in a theater with a carnivorous alien in the dark.
Far into the design process, Disney got cold feet about building a ride in the Magic Kingdom, their most child-friendly park, based on an R-rated horror film. Because of this they took the same basic concept and developed an incredibly similar original storyline that became the actual attraction that got built-in Walt Disney World.
As Disney had already gotten the rights to the franchise it was a natural choice to add a ride based on it at the height of its popularity, but given the reaction to the toned-down final attraction, the reaction to this certainly would have been even worse, regardless of the quality of the ride itself.
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