If i remember correctly, it was just fortuituous and -
eventually- misconstrued timing.
Epic opens in
May of 2025. Everyone had already heard rumors of A Creature from the Black Lagoon ride before Epic opened but no one knew of a system; Combine this with the fact that Universal released patents and blueprints for boat ride concepts and systems that we haven't seen yet and everyone starts to imagine their use for rumored attractions (like Zelda and CftBL). Everyone figured
BOAT because of the nature of the lagoon in question, but i think it eventually grew to a more natural want due to the success of the land and a want for a more mature/adventurous water ride for the park that could also be another people-eater, as boat rides
tend to be. PLUS, we all want to see Universal do something new and crazy like the patents seemingly indicated they were imagining.
Mission Bermudes opens to the public at Futuroscope in
June of 2025, showing Mack Rides first Rocking Boat (
coaster-hybrid) attraction. I think the grapevine took off and eventually met an echo chamber with no true source to actually advocate for it; The Universal fanbase starts to imagine this system for CftBL more publicly across the forums.
In
September of 2025, Dollywood announces that they're going to use the Rocking Boat system for Nightflight Expedition, the first time the system is going to be used in the U.S. and it will be entirely indoors with state of the art special effects and a massive budget; And grapevine/echo chamber rallies for Universal to do a CftBL ride with this system yet again.
That's all i can really find as far as speculative timing goes.