Indiana Jones Adventure
Indiana Jones Adventure is an enhanced motion vehicle dark ride attraction based on the Indiana Jones film series, located at Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. Guests accompany intrepid archaeologist Dr. Indiana Jones on a turbulent quest, aboard military troop transport vehicles, through a dangerous subterranean lost temple guarded by a supernatural power.
The attraction premiered as Temple of the Forbidden Eye at Disneyland in Anaheim, California on March 3, 1995, and opened to the general public on March 4, 1995. A second, and nearly identical, version of the ride opened as Temple of the Crystal Skull on September 4, 2001, at Tokyo DisneySea in Chiba, Japan, unrelated to the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. On August 10, 2024, it was announced at the D23 Expo that an Indiana Jones attraction will replace Dinosaur at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Bay Lake, Florida, featuring a different story, involving Indiana Jones in search of a mythical creature in a Mayan temple.
History
Because of the success of Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Bay Lake, Florida, Walt Disney Imagineering and George Lucas collaborated once again to create a new Indiana Jones-themed attraction for Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. Unlike the previous collaboration, this attraction was created with a backstory "set in the Lost Delta of India, circa 1935". Indiana Jones Adventure is the fourth collaboration between Disney and Lucasfilm, after the Disneyland attractions Captain EO, Star Tours, and Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! and prior to Disney buying Lucasfilm.Several early concepts were considered, including a walk-through adventure and a high-speed mine car adventure within a temple. To avoid a long queue, Imagineers considered using Jungle Cruise launches to shuttle guests to the loading area.
The team tested key show elements in a Burbank warehouse on a full-sized elevated track that resembled a freeway. This enabled the team to test set pieces, lighting, effects, transport clearances, and motion profiles.
Groundbreaking for the Temple of the Forbidden Eye occurred in August 1993, with more than 400 Imagineers working on its design and construction. Tony Baxter led a core project team of nearly 100 Imagineers. To create space for the queue area and the show building, an area of the former "Eeyore" parking lot was demolished, and the Monorail and Jungle Cruise attractions were rerouted. Disney filed for patent on the ride-system on November 16, 1995. Harrison Ford was asked to reprise his role as Indiana Jones, but ultimately negotiations to secure Ford's participation broke down in December 1994 for unknown reasons. Instead, Dave Temple provided the voice of Jones. Ford's physical likeness, however, has nonetheless been used in subsequent audio-animatronic figures.
The Temple of the Forbidden Eye premiered on March 3, 1995. Among the invited celebrity guests were George Lucas, Michael Eisner, Dan Aykroyd, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brendan Fraser, Wayne Gretzky, Elliott Gould, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Dennis Miller, Lindsay Wagner, Tony Danza and Carrie Fisher. To promote the opening of the attraction, the Disney Channel produced a half hour-long TV program entitled Indiana Jones Adventure featuring Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies reprising their roles from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Forty days prior to the attraction's opening, a "Forty Years of Adventure" promotion giveaway of 40 unique annual trading cards began. Guests with valid paid admission received a voucher at the main gate turnstile to exchange for the card of the day, each in a series featuring the landmark attraction of the year starting with 1955. The last card was distributed on March 2, 1995. A special "41st" card of larger issue featured the Indiana Jones Adventure on March 3. Artist Drew Struzan produced a one-sheet poster in the same theme as the films, using permission from Ford to use his likeness. The adventure opened to general admission on March 4.
AT&T Corporation sponsored construction of the attraction and the first seven years of operation, from 1995 to 2002. One of three styles of Marabic decoder cards was distributed to each guest, advertising their promotional campaign on the back. "It’s great to have AT&T as presenting sponsor," said then-Disneyland President Paul Pressler. "With Disneyland celebrating its 40th Anniversary and preparing to open its most exciting attraction, we welcome the opportunities this relationship is sure to create." The attraction currently has no sponsor.
The ride was temporarily closed on September 4, 2012 for an extensive refurbishment and re-opened on December 7, 2012. Scheduled modifications included enhancements to lighting, paint, figure animation and other effects. In 2013, the idol of Mara that appears in the Hall of Promise scene was updated with projection mapping effects.
On November 19, 2019, Disney announced a $300,000 refurbishment that would happen sometime in early 2020.
On January 9, 2023, the version at Disneyland went through another refurbishment, and re-opened on March 17, 2023, which included a freshening up of the audio-animatronics and projections, and a new projected scene of a tunnel collapsing replacing the original rat cave scene.
Ride system
Guests board an Enhanced Motion Vehicle intended to appear as a battered military troop transport. EMVs ride on neoprene-filled tires for operational precision. The tires are driven by hydraulic rotors that provide forward motion, and hydraulic pressure is applied onboard each vehicle at using DC pressurizers. The vehicle has four-wheel steering atop the surface of a slotted roadbed. The track has only three switches: a left/right split switch just before loading/unloading, a left/right combine switch just after safety check station/dispatch and a compound switch to swap vehicles in/out of the maintenance bay, behind the mirrors. Beneath the slot a tubular guideway guides the front wheelset and a damper for the rear wheelset, and three electrical buss bars provide the EMV 480 volts AC. The power is divided among the two motion systems, control, safety, and audio systems. Each transport can accommodate twelve guests with three rows of four seats each, with the front-left seat behind a non-operational steering wheel.Each troop transport is a motion simulator which travels at a maximum speed of just over atop a slotted roadbed / guiderail track. The transport car body is attached by three hydraulic rams to the frame of the chassis, which allows the shell to articulate independently. A guest's physically intense experience is programmed to achieve the illusion of greater speed and catastrophic mechanical failure using the enhanced-motion vehicle's ability to add several feet of lift then rapidly descend, shudder and tremble, and intensify cornering with counterbank and twist. The intensity of each experience varies as the on-board computer constantly chooses between pre-programmed intensity versions already stored in its memory as it traverses the show building with its load of guests.
This ride system was invented specially for the Indiana Jones Adventure and has been implemented in one other attraction: Dinosaur, located at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Heavy or light traffic within the ride system can cause speed variations as the vehicles try not to enter the specified safety distance between one another. On busy days, each vehicle may slow to a crawl at intervals within the ride path in order to allow the vehicle ahead to gain distance, then suddenly jerk back into higher speed. Because of these unexpected variations in speed, the soundtrack to the ride is not of a specific length, in fact, each scene of the attraction has a pre-selected score to play which is already of a certain length. If the vehicle finds itself remaining in one scene for an extended period of time, the score will play in full or until the vehicle leaves the scene. If the vehicle remains in a scene longer than the length of the score, then an exaggerated soundtrack of the vehicle's engine will fade-in and play to keep riders from experiencing awkward silence. Due to safety reasons, vehicles on the ride path cannot reverse. Contrary to the finale scene when the vehicle reverses away from the boulder, the vehicle is actually stationary while the motion base tilts backwards and the cave walls accelerate past the riders to give the illusion of reversing.
Audio-Animatronics
The attraction features four Audio-Animatronics, three of which are animatronics of Indiana Jones, and one of a giant cobra. Prior to the 2010 refurbishment, the Indiana Jones figure in front of the Gates of Doom had his back pushed against the gates. During the refurbishment, he was replaced with a more advanced figure that now is leaning his full body weight into the right door.Disneyland version
Story
Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye is told through twelve letters and telegrams scattered throughout the queue as well as three newsreels shown before guests board the attraction.In 1935 India, Indiana Jones reunites missing fragments of a map documenting the precise location of an ancient temple believed to have been buried in a flood over two thousand years ago. According to legend, the temple was built to honor the deity Mara, who offers one of three gifts to all who come to the hallowed site on the condition that they never gaze into the eyes of Mara.
Although the discovery, dubbed the "Temple of the Forbidden Eye" by the media, sets the archaeological community abuzz. Sallah begins conducting guided tours. Good fortune comes to many tourists, while others do not return at all. Jones eventually ventures inside to find the missing tourists.
Queue
The attraction's immersive and carefully detailed queue leads guests through dimly lit temple chambers and passageways containing booby-trapped sections reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies.The queue begins outside, winding past a 2.5 short ton Mercedes-Benz troop transport truck. This is the actual vehicle used in the desert chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. A small mining car near the truck is a movie prop as well, used in the mine scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Guests also walk by a noisy "hit-and-miss" engine/generator set piece, which appears to power the lights strung deep into the temple.
Much of the queue is inside the temple itself. Throughout the bowels of the temple, petroglyphs in "Marabic" warn temple visitors of the rewards and perils that can be found further within. The glyphs can be translated into English using a simple character substitution encoding. In the early months of the attraction's existence, guests were given decoder cards; the cards are now only distributed during special events or when made available. If unable to receive a decoder card, the code is easily solvable as each symbol bears a strong resemblance to its corresponding letter in the English alphabet. The sole exception is the letter I, which, appropriately, resembles an eye. Where the text is painted, vowels appear in red.
The queue contains several interactive features. In the "spike room", the ceiling appears to be retained by several upright bamboo poles. When the key supporting pole is pushed or pulled, guests are startled by sounds of the ceiling dropping as the spikes begin to descend slowly toward them. In the next area, large stone blocks released from the ceiling are barely kept in place by wooden wedges and supports. Further on, in the Rotunda Calendar, pulling on a rope triggers responses from Dr. Dunfor Pullit, an out-of-sight archeologist supported by the rope beneath the sarcophagus stone. Various crates throughout the queue contain some significant features; one marked with the number "990 6753" refers to the number on the crate holding the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Another crate is marked "Deliver to Club Obi Wan", referring to a fictional club at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, itself a reference to the character Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. Eventually, guests encounter a projection of a newsreel of the discovery, followed by safety instructions delivered by Sallah. Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse appear on the cover of a copy of Life magazine in Professor Jones' office.