Indiana Jones Adventure
| Indiana Jones Adventure | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park |
| Land / area | Adventureland |
| Type | Enhanced motion vehicle dark ride |
| Opened | March 3, 1995 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 46 in (117 cm) |
| Status | Operating |
Indiana Jones Adventure (full title Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye) is a dark ride in Adventureland at Disneyland Park in the Disneyland Resort, California. Opened on March 3, 1995, it places riders in military-style troop transports for an expedition into a ruined temple guarded by the deity Mara, drawing on the Indiana Jones film series. It was developed by Walt Disney Imagineering under project leader Tony Baxter, with input from George Lucas, whose collaboration with the park had already produced Star Tours and Captain EO.
Development
Planning began in the late 1980s, when Imagineers considered several concepts for an Indiana Jones attraction, including a mine-car roller coaster and a boat ride that would have shared a show building with the Jungle Cruise. The concept that survived combined a moving vehicle with a motion-simulator base, allowing a single ride system to suggest rough terrain, sudden stops and near misses without a roller coaster track. George Lucas participated in story development, and the resulting attraction was built largely outside the park's original boundary, on land formerly used as a parking lot, so that its large show building would not disrupt Adventureland's sightlines. AT&T sponsored the attraction from its opening until 2002.
Queue
The queue is among the longest and most detailed at Disneyland, running roughly half a mile through jungle paths and into the temple itself. It passes a 1930s archaeological camp, complete with a period troop truck of the type seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark, before winding through booby-trapped corridors, a spike-lined ceiling chamber and a rotunda used to present a faux newsreel that sets up the story: tourists who visited the temple in the 1930s have gone missing after looking into the eyes of Mara. Sallah, played by John Rhys-Davies in filmed segments, briefs riders on safety before boarding. Several elements of the queue are interactive, including a rope in a well shaft and a bamboo pole that triggers rumbling effects when pushed.
Experience
Riders board twelve-passenger transports built on the Enhanced Motion Vehicle system, in which each vehicle sits on a motion base programmed independently of the others, so no two rides move in exactly the same way. In the Chamber of Destiny the vehicle appears to pass through one of three doors, offering earthly riches, eternal youth or knowledge of the future, though all routes use the same track. Mara's eyes open and the journey deteriorates: the transport crosses a collapsing bridge above a lava pit, passes through a chamber of mummies and a tunnel of venom-dart traps, and encounters snakes, insects and Indiana Jones himself, who appears as an Audio-Animatronics figure at several points. The finale recreates the films' rolling boulder, which appears to barrel toward the vehicle before it drops away at the last moment. The ride lasts about three and a half minutes.
Legacy
The ride system developed for the attraction was adapted for Dinosaur at Disney's Animal Kingdom, which uses a near-identical track layout, and a second Indiana Jones Adventure, the Temple of the Crystal Skull, opened at Tokyo DisneySea in 2001 with a different story and setting. The Disneyland attraction has been updated periodically, notably in a 2013 refurbishment that revised the Mara effects and a 2023 refurbishment that added a new digital projection sequence early in the ride.