The afternoon thing is so true, yesterday on our second ride everyone couldn't be arsed...
It can detect it because there's a person doing the speech (hence why most of the time the lemur, referred to a he by Chase, then sounds very SARF LANDAN female)... It's a very, VERY poor imitation of what Disney have been doing on Stitch Live and Turtle Talk... Whilst kids love it, I can't help but think it was a needless (and poorly thought out, just look at the loading procedure for it) addition to the ride (which to some degree, actually sums the ride itself up)...