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.