Crowd will care though...so that's the draw of the event for me.
Yeah, no matter how you slice it, Bryan not being in would be garbage.
One way I could see it going down is Batista comes in as the 28th or 29th wrestler, does some heelish shyt with the help of the authority and eliminates Punk. Everybody thinks Batista has it in the bag, when suddenly as the 30th buzzer sounds, Daniel Bryan's music hits and he runs in there as a last minute entrant and somehow overcomes Batista to screw the authority and head to Wrestlemania as the main eventer!
Next day on RAW the big mystery is who allowed Daniel into the rumble, and it ends up being revealed that Vince has done a pseudo-face turn and co-signed Daniel just to rub it in the face of his daughter and son in law - setting up that McMahon rivalry everyone keeps predicting.