At first, Ore Cart Attraction 2.0 would’ve been just as grandly appointed as Jeep Attraction 2.0. Cavernous temples, overgrown jungles, ancient curses, etc. Then the park opened and everybody sobered up. Euro Disney Resort’s underperformance tanked projects company-wide, the domino effect eventually felling entire parks, but it still desperately needed another coaster. The only difference was that now the ordinary kind would suffice.
Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril opened on July 30, 1993. It no longer entered a temple so much as swerved around the remains of one. The custom-built ride still managed to make Disney history as the first to go upside down. Beyond this distinction, Péril served its purpose and continues to rattle guests to this day. It just wasn’t what the Imagineers had hoped for.
Less than a month after the compromised attraction opened in Paris, ground broke in Anaheim for Adventure. It was too far along to suffer much from the Euro Disney fallout. With the Eeyore parking lot already cratered, the only way out was through.
A sign was staked in the planter out front, both promise and fair warning - The Adventure Begins... in so many months.
Anybody who couldn’t afford to keep time at the Happiest Place on Earth just had to watch Super Bowl XXIX. The halftime show saw Indy chasing his toughest prize yet - the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Stage punches were thrown. The Eye of Mara was ignored. Patti LaBelle and Tony Bennett joined forces on “Can You Feel The Love Tonight.” It was the biggest possible advertisement on the biggest possible billboard and still not enough.
The grand opening was heralded by not one, but two television specials. The first, a fictionalized making-of, followed John Rhys-Davies and Karen Allen as themselves entering the Temple of the Forbidden Eye and discovering there was nothing fictional about the curse of Mara. The second was a newsier montage of media day festivities hosted by Wil Shriner. Every star in Hollywood seemed to survive the Adventure, even those with admittedly dubious intentions. Before entering the temple, Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted on the record, “I’m just basically here to check out what kind of movie memorabilia I should take with me to Planet Hollywood.” Dean Cain. Fran Drescher. Elliott Gould. Jodie Sweetin. Dennis Miller. All the reviews rhymed, even Arnold’s: “It was fabulous!”
“Once again,” said George Lucas, presiding over a stone cobra, “we’ve turned an action movie into a live-action extravaganza.” As Indiana Jones himself - not Harrison Ford, who had no involvement with the ride due to contract disputes over a fourth film - presented the Jewel of Power, Lucas and Michael Eisner touched the sacred gem and made it official.
On March 4, 1995, the boulder was ready to roll.
The Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye channeled the spirit of the films in ways even unnoticed. The randomized programming allowed for 160,000 different on-ride experiences. Imagineer and illustrator Chuck Ballew invented an entire alphabet, "Maraglyphics," to keep all the ancient warnings consistent. The truck that Indy slides under in Raiders is permanently parked out front. Just past the exit, a mine cart from Temple of Doom rusts gracefully. Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, screenwriters on that sequel, looked over the ride script. Legendary painter Drew Struzan crafted the attraction poster, as he did for the films. It composer Richard Bellis arranged the legendary themes of John Williams into an unmistakable, but seemingly original score. The Jungle Cruise, ultimately shortened instead of extended, received a 1930s makeover along with the rest of Adventureland to make the new explorer in town feel right at home.
In every possible way, it was the ultimate Indiana Jones adventure. Disney even dedicated the 40th anniversary celebration to it, borrowing a familiar font for the new park slogan, “Celebrate 40 Years of Adventure.”
That’s likely why Imagineering didn’t fix much for Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull when it opened with the rest of Tokyo DisneySea in 2001.
The Indo-Asian mythology of its California counterpart is replaced with Mesoamerican, befitting its Lost River Delta surroundings. Instead of a Hindu temple, wayward travelers entera Mayan pyramid. Instead of Sallah running tours, Indy’s here-to-fore unseen coworker Paco handles the finances. Instead of Mara guarding riches three, a massive crystal skull protects the originally intended prize, the Fountain of Youth.
Beat for beat, the ride proper is identical to the original Adventure, though some of the finer points have changed. Without John Rhys-Davies giving his all in the preshow films, the setup is quieter and the resulting tone more severe. The giant snake that attacks riders has been promoted to a giant snake god, Quetzalcoatl to be precise, that attacks riders. The only new major effect is a blown fire ring (fog lit orange) right before the dart corridor.
More substantial, however, is the ride’s belated neighbor, Raging Spirits. As Crystal Skull is to Adventure, Spirits is to Temple du Péril, albeit stripped of any overt Indiana Jones theming. Upon the coaster’s opening in 2005, the two attractions together, Jeep Attraction 2.0 and Ore Cart Attraction 2.0, formed what remains the closest thing yet constructed to the original Lost Expedition plan.
Emphasis on yet.
Since the opening of Temple of the Crystal Skull, no new Indiana Jones experience has been added to any Disney park anywhere. To commemorate the release of the unrelated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, Disneyland launched the Indiana Jones Summer of Hidden Mysteries. A new temporary show, Secret of the Stone Tiger, took over Aladdin’s Oasis and filled in the narrative gap leading up to Indy’s discovery of the Temple of Mara. On the rooftops overhead and in the midst of bustling crowds, Random Acts of Indy would break out, allowing passersby an up-close look at Jones doing what he does best - mostly punching. Although, it was not up-close enough for a meet-and-greet, something forbidden by Lucas at the time.
Not that he was on bad terms with the company.
At Star Wars Celebration III in 2005, his first convention appearance in 18 years, Lucas revealed that a Star Tours sequel was in the works. The result - Star Tours - The Adventures Continue - would open in 2011 to a second round of effusive praise. Riders no longer had to settle for a flight to Endor. The new and improved attraction randomly combined opening scenes, destination planets, and more for a possible 700 unique experiences. The original was deemed The Ultimate Adventure, but now there was no contest.
There was also no Indiana Jones.
Rumors of updates involving the other films in the series have haunted the Epic Stunt Spectacular since opening day. To date, minus some painted-over swastikas, it survives unscathed. Hopes for an Adventure clone somewhere at Walt Disney World were complicated, if not dashed by Animal Kingdom’s Dinosaur, a turn-for-turn copy of the track ambushed by apatosaurs instead of skeletons.
And then the unthinkable happened.
A year-and-a-half after Lucas cut the ribbon on Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, he sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion, the cost of about 80 Indiana Jones Adventures.
“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” he said in the official release, “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars onto a new generation of filmmakers.”
Disney would spend another year in negotiations with franchise distributor Paramount, but Indy’s absence from the initial announcement is hard to miss.
That galaxy far, far away is just that - a galaxy. The synergistic possibilities are not quite so endless with an ornery grave robber who decks Nazis in his spare time. But Indy didn’t come up in the news around the first Lucas-Disney partnership, either. There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t be making a bigger splash in the parks soon enough.
Nine years later, with cameras finally rolling on Indiana Jones 5, the franchise has lost ground in the parks.
The Great Movie Ride closed. The Last Crusade motorcade could be mistaken for reclaimed art. The Epic Stunt Spectacular closed with everything else during the pandemic but remains closed.
At least the Indiana Jones Adventure is still going strong, plus or minus a few of its most troublesome effects. The ice machine that exploded “rocks” from the ceiling rusted to death six weeks after opening. The structurally unwieldy trick that turned one chamber into three - a hanging turntable that pivoted three doorframes in front of a single door - is now handled with projection mapping. But beyond the simplest mechanical sense, it all still works. It’s still a benchmark of entertainment design.
There’s a reason forums and Facebook groups wish for one more Adventure. And where there’s smoke, usually Indiana Jones isn’t far behind.
In 2015, Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar opened at Disney Springs. In the spirit and spectacular décor of Trader Sam’s, the watering hole is dedicated to another world-class globetrotter, the pilot who introduces Jones to his pet snake in Raiders. Faithful fans can toast his heroism as well as that other guy’s with a Cool-Headed Monkey and chase it with a plate of Tanis Tacos. The true diehards might even spot some artifacts from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, that most beloved of Indy video games. According to the recent DisneylandForward conference, Jock might even be in the market for a second hangar in Anaheim.
That same year, Disney announced the first two steps in reimagining Hollywood Studios, née MGM. Star Wars and Toy Story would get their own lands and, eventually, something else would. No further details have slipped out since, but all it takes is a map to notice who already owns a corner of the park.
Then again, Jones is crafty.
In 2018, qualified rumors slid the possible Indiana Jones land over to Animal Kingdom, specifically to replace Dinoland, the land that has a near-duplicate of the Adventure infrastructure already. Just as fast, that trail went cold and word was he'd be moving back to Hollywood. Then the pandemic wiped the entire drawing board clean.
Tony Baxter is retired, though he does consult on projects involving his past work. George Lucas can only offer friendly advice about his soapy space opera and rough-and-tumble action pictures. Steven Spielberg has ceded the director’s chair for Indy’s last adventure, content to executive produce.
The Indiana Jones legacy will endure, but short of a Ford-less reboot in the foreseeable future, it can only truly thrive in theme parks.
Fundamentally, more even than Star Wars, Indiana Jones was made for them. In those initial talks between Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan, they hashed out what would become the mine cart chase in Temple of Doom. When the effects team on that film needed inspiration for the proper movement, they went to Disneyland and rode the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Big Thunder Mountain. As much as the design of the Indiana Jones Adventure made it great, what makes it transcendent is that uncanny thrill, right there in the fossil record from the start.
In case moviegoers missed the first half of Temple of Doom’s title, the tagline spelled it out for them - If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.
The beauty of any Indiana Jones attraction is that, for those three or four fleeting minutes, maybe it isn’t.
Maybe it’s yours.
Cue the Raiders March.
Comments
What a wonderful deep dive on the relationship between Lucas, Spielberg, Indiana Jones, and the Disney parks, and the impact they've had. Indiana Jones has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions, and I hope that Disney will continue to create ways for the fans to participate in his adventures. Loved this article!