I like Regina, but I'm not about to jump on her fanbase bandwagon and cheer her on blindly. She's a likable
villain, something that's so rare. Usually villains are made to be unlikable and immoral bastards who have no redeeming qualities. She's not like that. She's a "real" person with real flaws who just happened to end up on the wrong side of the hero/villain coin. That doesn't make what she does acceptable or forgivable but it does give her depth.
And it's already been said many, many times that rolling the same handful of characters into the same villains is tiresome (and yet you can ignore they
don't do this for
any of the princesses or heroes?). Ironically the one person throwing the biggest fit over the combining of the villains is the one trying to defend it. Your "gut feeling" is laughbly off about me. I have no connection, subconcious or otherwise over Ursula and I could care less who they chose, except they keep reusing the same stretching credibility trope of "it was Regina all along!" line.
Let me explain it this way: They could have spread out this villain of the week is someone new and other times it was really Regina/Rumple and had them fill in for different roles at times. Instead it was almost every one of the villains is secretly these two and it's become a joke.
Now it's so tired and so cliched it just earns an eye roll from anyone who can correctly "guess" it. Much like your "guessing" how people would react, only your smugness is preventing you from seeing everyone else can easily see it coming a mile away too because
they keep on doing it! 
This is people who are hoping maybe
OUAT will catch a clue and start bringing in new guest villains once in a while. Or maybe they can switch it up and the same person can be a princess or a hero in two places at once.