Star Tours receives all the hype, but it’s not the only Lucasfilm intellectual property (IP) with a presence at a Disney theme park. This attraction casts you in the role of a grizzled archaeologist, one known for a whip, a cocksure grin, and a fedora hat. He’s the perfect example of the Adventureland hero. There’s just one problem. When Disney built a ride for this man, Henry Walton Jones Jr., he wasn’t even a Disney property.
How then did a man who chose his pet’s name, Indiana, as his moniker become one of the central figures at Adventureland? What was Disney’s thought process here, and how authentic is the recreation of the Indiana Jones movie franchise in the attraction? Let’s go Behind the Ride to discover all the secrets and history of Indiana Jones Adventure.
The history
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
While The Walt Disney Company rarely uses outside IP as the backbone of its attractions, it’s made exceptions from time to time. Jeopardy appears in the former Ellen’s Energy Adventure ride, and The Twilight Zone is the only dimension where a Tower of Terror could plausibly exist.
Of course, the first non-Disney ride ever was a cousin to Indiana Jones. Star Tours, based on the Star Wars franchise, (officially) arrived at Disneyland in January of 1987. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, was also the man who imagined Indiana Jones into being. After Disney deftly handled the adaptation of Star Wars into an amusement park attraction, Lucas expressed an interest in their doing the same with Mr. Jones.
This discussion took place all the way back in 1988. It quickly bore fruit, as Disney had just added a new gate at Walt Disney World, Disney-MGM Studios, which we now know as Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Disney wanted a fun celebration of the filmmaking process. When Lucas offered the Indiana Jones license, they had the perfect idea. In 1989, the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! arrived, and, with the recent closure of The Great Movie Ride, it’s now the oldest remaining Hollywood attraction at the park, although rumors of its impending demise have been around for several years.
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
What you may not realize is that Indiana Jones Adventure wasn’t the first Indiana Jones ride. Yes, construction began on this project in 1989, the same year as the stunt show. The first Indy ride open to the public, however, arrived in 1993 at Disneyland Park in Disneyland Paris. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril is a mine cart roller coaster that quickly became one of the anchor selling points at Euro Disney.
For six years, American Imagineers toiled to build a unique attraction at Disneyland’s Aventureland. They spent more than $100 million on the project, with one park planner describing the cost as $200 million in 1995. That’s the equivalent of $325 million today. Disney spent a lot of money to be in the business of Indiana Jones. What did they get for their money? Read on…
The Experience: An authentic exploration of ancient ruins…in the line queue
The Trick: Turning a negative into a positive
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
Space is perennially tight at Disneyland. Walt Disney himself lamented that he couldn’t afford more land when he constructed the park in the middle of former orange groves. In attempting to introduce the Temple of the Forbidden Eye to Adventureland, park planners faced a problem. They had a finite space where they could build what is an extremely large attraction area. It’s more than 50,000 square feet in size, most of which is housed in a huge building at the south of campus. And for an added degree of difficulty, Imagineers had to construct the temple so that it didn’t interfere with the Disneyland Railroad.
The only way that Disney could fit it in the available space was by positioning it on grounds that aren’t technically part of the park. This trick is one that Disney used for the first time 30 years prior to Indiana Jones with The Haunted Mansion. The catch is that for it to work, guests would have to walk about 1,000 extra steps to reach the attraction entrance.
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
Where most park planners would see obstacles, Imagineers saw a huge opportunity. Guests HAVE to walk that path to get to the ride. So, Disney turned the entire area into a mini-themed land inside Adventureland. They added enough trees to create a realistic jungle background, as if the explorer has to navigate through thick foliage to reach the intended destination. Bamboo fences guide the path, and ominous signs hint that the structure ahead is unsafe at best. There are even a few high voltage warnings, an oddity for a derelict temple.
This elongated ride queue has become a staple of the Imagineering toolbox. Expedition Everest takes the same idea and stretches it to the logical extreme by offering artifacts in every square inch of interior line queue. Avatar Flight of Passage has the longest line queue ever built, capable of entertaining guests for three full hours. Many of the conceits of both attractions began with Indiana Jones Adventure and its unavoidable half-mile line queue.
The Experience: Building and Populating the Temple of the Forbidden Eye
The Trick: Recreating and expanding the Indiana Jones universe
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
The origins of this attraction go back so far that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade hadn’t even opened yet, much less the one with the aliens and the refrigerator nuke scene. Imagineers could call on only two Indiana Jones movies for inspiration in constructing this attraction.
While world-building, they prioritized the hallmarks of an Indiana Jones adventure. Those include a forbidden place where foolhardy explorers have given their lives for countless centuries and a series of set pieces that seem straight from the movies. The latter area has always been a particular area of expertise for Imagineers. After all, Walt Disney taught his employees to craft rides as if they were a series of movie sets. The Temple of the Forbidden Eye lends itself perfectly to that philosophy. The only catch was moving the theme park tourist from set to set, a problem that called for a special solution we’ll discuss in the next section.
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
Building and populating the temple was a fun process. During the 1980s, Indiana Jones was one of the most popular and iconic franchises of the decade. Imagineers were allowed to let their imaginations run wild in creating artifacts that would plausibly exist in an abandoned temple. To ramp up the fear factor, skeletons are ubiquitous. A rumor I can neither confirm nor deny is that the Temple hosts 1,995 skeletons as a wink to the year the attraction opened.
The entirety of the temple is man-made, obviously, but you’ll be hard-pressed to think of it in those terms as you ride through the building. The conceit of the attraction is that Indy has unearthed a long-forgotten temple for a goddess named Mara, and intends to find many artifacts that “belong in a museum,” as our hero would say.
Mara’s nearly omnipotent, and she can grant special powers like eternal life. There’s just one catch. You can’t look her in the eye, thus the official (but rarely pronounced) name of the attraction, Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. The oddity here is that the rider isn’t Indiana Jones. Instead, you’re trying to help Sallah find his friend, who has gotten lost somewhere in the dilapidated dwelling.
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
The theming reinforces the idea that if Indy can get trapped here, no regular tourist should ever go inside. The structure itself is impeccable, with a giant ladder leading all the way up to the top of the façade. This isn’t a misleading representation of height, either. The “Temple” takes riders across three stories of set pieces. Foreboding elements like a rickety bridge and a hollowed out skull statue offer further hints that guests should turn back the way that they came. It’s one of the most realistic jobs of world-building that Disney has ever done, an amazing feat for something that’s more than 20 years old. You truly feel like you’re stranded in a temple, and you may never see the sun again.
The experience: A Jeep that carries you back into daylight
The trick: Building a heretofore unknown ride cart called an EMV
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
The key to the greatness of Indiana Jones Adventure isn’t any of the amazing features thus far, though. Instead, it’s a ride cart that Imagineers created especially for this attraction.
You already understand the challenges that Disney cast members faced. They had to carry theme park tourists through a giant area covering three floors and tens of thousands of square feet. In the process, they needed a vehicle that accentuated the precarious situation that the riders faced. They were in an abandoned temple and fleeing from an enraged deity, after all.
Disney didn’t have this technology available yet, but they did have a kernel of it. Imagineers were always proud of the gimbal-based design of Star Tours. The pivoted support gave the ride unprecedented mobility and the ability to shake riders such that they could “feel” the events happening onscreen. This type of motion simulation was new at the time, and the designers of Indiana Jones deduced that they could use it as the basis for something new.
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
Enter the Enhanced Motion Vehicle.
Indiana Jones Adventure has a Jeep, only it’s not the type of Jeep that you could buy at a store. It’s a marvel of engineering that needed several new patents to create. The entire vehicle is a motion simulator, and it can bounce your seat whenever the action dictates an action. When you ride across a creaky bridge, the EMV shakes you so that you appreciate the peril of your predicament.
The technology of the EMV was so revolutionary for the time that Disney had to build a special test track to test it. They were understandably nervous about testing an original ride cart on the unsuspecting public. After all, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Each EMV is self-sufficient. It has 480 volts of energy to power the vehicle (Disney didn’t want an entire fleet of gas-powered vehicles, after all). It also has a durable chassis and actuators that can move the cart in three distinct thrust planes (x, y, and z) and with three different rotational axes (pitch, roll, and yaw). The Disney Jeep seems like it powers the riders at a hefty velocity, but it actually only goes 14 miles per hour. It seems like more due to the bumpy experience and scary supernatural stuff happening all around you.
Image via Flickr user Loren Javier
Image: Flickr (license)
Disney loved the EMV so much that they used the same technology again for Dinosaur, an Animal Kingdom attraction that uses similar structure. An explorer travels back in time to visit the age of the dinosaurs, only to realize that a comet’s about to strike.
Dinosaur opened only three years after Indiana Jones Adventure. Its existence speaks to a rare amount of pride that Imagineers felt about their creation of the EMV. It really is amazing tech. Some rides (mainly at Universal Studios) have a sedentary cart that rocks back and forth but doesn’t go anywhere. At Indiana Jones Adventure, the motion simulation is internal, not external. Your seat shakes you until you believe that you are in mortal danger at a forbidden temple.
Indiana Jones Adventure is quietly one of the most influential theme park attractions of the past 30 years. Its impact on motion simulation, ride design, and line queue techniques has revolutionized the industry. The next time you ride it, take a moment to appreciate its influence on Dinosaur, Expedition Everest, Avatar Flight of Passage, and like 15 rides at Universal Studios. It was the precursor to the modern motion simulation style that so popular today.
