Take it for what it's worth, but I exchanged emails with someone high on the chain at SDC this morning, and extended my apologies (I was not the culprit) that the word got out in advance of next week. They didn't seem overly concerned about it.
That said, let's keep something in mind. I am the furthest thing from a theme park expert, but the entire process of this project seems pretty a-typical and almost the polar opposite of how most parks handle new attractions. If I'm not mistaken, most parks generally seem to announce a new ride or attraction before they even break ground on it.
We must remember that the majority of this ride was constructed without an official confirmation or announcement about it. That's only fueled speculation and buzz about it from day one, and certainly opened the door to allow a leak that wasn't necessarily intended to go out in advance of the official unveiling.
The probability of not being able to keep something under raps for the duration increases exponentially when you're practically through with constructing the ride and haven't even announced it yet. On one hand it's a genius marketing move, but as we've now seen, it bears risk.
It may not be technically ethical, but I can't say I fault anyone for wanting to share info about an upcoming attraction, once that information has become public domain – whether it was intended to be or not. We are after all, enthusiasts. And this is exactly the type of thing we discuss and speculate year round. We yearn for anything remotely concrete that could confirm our best guesses, or steer our conversations in a totally new direction.
The bottom line is, someone presumably screwed up in not protecting the beta site. And when another enthusiast happened to drop by SilverDollarCity2013.com, the entire curtain had already been pulled back. I can't blame anyone for wanting to give us the heads up about it. The only difference is, we suspected something was amiss knowing the official announcement was still little more than a week away.
It's not as if someone was taken aside by a park employee and shown the layout maps with all of the ride details and decided to snap a photo and post it here for the world to see.
Pardon the long-winded post, I just wanted to offer my two cents. At the end of the day, I think all is well and we're still getting a ride that will put SDC on the proverbial map.