Temple of the Forbidden EMV

Image: Disney

In 1995, Disney Imagineering had debuted its most spectacular, grand, oversized, outrageous, and unbelievable ride yet. Born of a new era of cinematic thrills, Disneyland’s one-of-a-kind Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure – Temple of the Forbidden Eye was unlike anything Disney had done before and, arguably, stands among the best attractions they’ve developed since.

Absorbed into the misty, lost jungles of Disneyland’s Adventureland, guests are cast as nouveau riche members of European high society, drawn to this exotic port by reports of treasure. Newly unearthed by Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, the waterlogged river temple is said to be home to the ancient god Mara who would grant visitors to his temple one of three gifts: timeless youth, earthly riches, or visions of the future… unless they dared look into his dark and corroded eyes, leading them on a detour to doom.

Image: Disney / Lucasfilm

The ride careens through collapsing chambers, trips booby traps, jolts through insect-infected corridors, dives through hidden drops, launches headlong toward rolling boulders, and comes face-to-face with the 60-foot tall decaying face of the lost god Mara, carefully traversing a rickety wooden suspension bridge over a pit of boiling lava.

Image: Disney

And yet, the real star of Indiana Jones Adventure is the technology that makes it possible. Invented and patented for the ride, Disney’s Enhanced Motion Vehicle (or EMV) was a groundbreaking innovation. Disguised as a lumbering, gas-guzzling troop transport Jeep, the vehicle (seating 12) is in fact a sort of “slot-car” style ride powered along a track, with the passenger array attached to a motion-base.

That means that as the vehicle traverses the temple, it can pitch, roll, sway, rumble, buck, and slam as if it’s climbing rough terrain, whipping around corners, and shuddering to a stop. In fact, each EMV on Indiana Jones Adventure was programmed with a subtle “personality” allowing it to react differently to the trials of the temple.

Image: Disney

But the EMV also signaled an important narrative shift: rather than simply being observers gliding through dark ride scenes (think of Pirates of the Caribbean or Haunted Mansion), the EMV kicked off a new genre of modern dark ride, wherein guests are actors in the action. You looked into Mara’s eyes; you tripped the booby trap; you have to make it out alive. Indiana Jones Adventure was the first dark ride to have a vehicle programmed just as lights and sounds had been on its predecessors.

And while Indiana Jones Adventure’s 1995 opening took the west coast by storm, enterprising Imagineers in Florida saw a chance to bring the EMV to Orlando…

Creative compromise

The Imagineers responsible for Dinoland were willing to make a compromise in order to have their project funded over Beastly Kingdom. They knew that Eisner was looking for a bargain, and Indiana Jones Adventure had given them a great one...

Image: Disney

Instead of asking for the thrilling Excavator and the placid family ride through time, they were willing to conceptually combine both into a single attraction. Suddenly, this new take on a headlining ride for Dinoland could kill several birds with one stone: it would be a thrill ride and dark ride in one, bring the lauded EMV ride system to Walt Disney World, and save costly research and development dollars by cloning Indiana Jones Adventure's hardware and ride layout bolt-for-bolt. Since this new Countdown to Extinction could check all the boxes, Dinoland suddenly needed only one relatively inexpensive attraction financed compared to Beastly Kingdom's bare minimum of three...

Maybe that can help fans to see why Eisner ultimately opted for Dinoland over Beastly Kingdom; it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. But Imagineers weren’t as forgiving… For the design team working on Beastly Kingdom, the cancellation of their project was one too many slights from the infamously budget-conscious Disney under Eisner’s rule.

Many walked out of the company and allegedly took their plans for a medieval fantasy land just a few miles north, where they were incorporated into Universal’s Islands of Adventure (alongside a Jurassic Park land, oddly enough…) Dragon Tower was adapted into the more overt Dueling Dragons, and the rest of Beastly Kingdom's darker half became the village of Merlinwood. We chronicled that in-depth story in its own feature, Lost Legends: The Lost Continent – a must-read for industry enthusiasts.

Meanwhile, at Disney's Animal Kingdom...

Image: Disney

At Imagineering, work began on bringing Animal Kingdom’s now-assured dinosaur dark ride to life. Re-using Indiana Jones Adventure’s technology and layout, drafts called for a ride borrowing Temple of the Forbidden Eye’s frantic pace, and even its key structure, like the scene above clearly analagous to Indy’s iconic suspension bridge scene.

Ultimately, that proved a little too ambitious. Still quite cost-conscious, Eisner and his executives reined in designs for the ride, and it quickly came in line with a new strategy of synergy. It was inevitable now that the 1998 ride would cross-promote the 2000 film, and thus would introduce the world to the soon-to-be starring species of the movie. Given that the Tyrannosaurus rex had become synonymous with Universal's Jurassic Park just a few years earlier, the movie-makers opted for the truly unsettling carnotaurus (that's from the Latin "meat-eating bull") as their main antagonist, meaning he would be the big baddie in the ride, too.

Image: Disney

The horrific carnotaurus would take up residence inside the ride, with three of the attraction's 11 lifelike Audio Animatronics dedicated to the horned carnivore. The carnotaurus would be nimbler than the T. rex anyway, and feature blazing orange skin and a deafening roar that would make this lizard just as iconic to Disney as the T. rex would be for their competitors up the road.

The Dino Institute was constructed at Disney's Animal Kingdom, with the massive showbuilding hidden behind it. In a clever bit of Imagineering design, trees were planted on the larger showbuilding's roof behind the Institute's museum facade in order to conceal its existence. That way, guests standing before the Dino Institute would believe that it's truly just a small museum.

Image: Google

It seemed set. Disney's Animal Kingdom would have the hit it needed. The thrilling race through the last moments of the Cretaceous would be a headlining thrill to hold over audiences until Beastly Kingdom would arrive with its family fare. And when the park opened on April 22, 1998, Countdown to Extinction was its starring (and only) dark ride. On the next page, we’ll step into Dinoland and climb aboard this chaotic extinct adventure. Read on...