The reason the alternative arrivals "work well" is there are not too many people using them and those that do have bothered to read the NOTAM. When I give rides during the show I usually come in the warbird arrival unless the passenger is a pilot who's never seen the normal Ripon/Fisk arrival in which case I show him that.

My favorite arrival was when we grabbed a couple of Navions and took two of the Snowbirds up for a flight. We let them do one practice landing at an outlying field and then made them fly the Ripon/Fisk arrival to a landing on 36L. It was on their Oshkosh bucket list (they had already camped with their plane in Vintage, and got to go work the Moocows with the controllers). They also wanted to drive one of the VWs around so I borrowed the keys from one of our Vintage chairs to let them have a spin.