You know what would be fun is like a plot/character swap between rides again and goes to africa.... like Ernest showing Rene the "boomerang" he found and obviously she doesn't recognize exactly what it is because she's not a scholar but she can tell it's something interesting, maybe part of an artifact, and is like (girl who has only seen Illinois Smith and the Curse of Hitler's Brain) oh boy... getting a lot of "Illinois Smith and the Curse of Hitler's Brain" vibes from this!! And she recognizes this as her Big Chance to go on an adventure so she's like c'mon Ernest show me where you found this! And there's no real romance between them and it still ends with her realizing she wants a calmer lifestyle after all, but she does gain confidence along the way and it culminates in her coming to Ernest's rescue.

And conversely, Ernest trying to give his definitely mutual buddy Abner a yo-yo, and he's not remotely interested because it's not like it contains any valuable jewels or anything, surely, but Dr. Glencliff sees the transaction and is like oh boy time to kidnap Abner and threaten to cut him up with my cranial bone saw if Ernest doesn't hand over the jewels!! And there is a romantic arc and it actually fully plays out because while I'm at it I'm also switching around a bunch of other aspects. Well that's all