Indiana Jones Adventure
Indiana Jones Adventure is a dark ride attraction based on the Indiana Jones film series that is located in Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. Guests join renowned archaeologist Dr. Indiana Jones on a perilous journey through a treacherous subterranean forgotten temple guarded by a mystical entity, atop military troop transport vehicles.
The attraction debuted as Temple of the Forbidden Eye on March 3, 1995, at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and opened to the general public on March 4, 1995. On September 4, 2001, a virtually similar replica of the attraction debuted as Temple of the Crystal Skull at Tokyo DisneySea in Chiba, Japan, unrelated to the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Queue
The immersive and meticulously crafted queue of the attraction leads customers through darkly lit temple chambers and scary corridors with booby-trapped portions reminiscent of Indiana Jones movies.
The line starts outdoors, past a 2.5-ton Mercedes-Benz military transport truck. This is the actual vehicle used in the Raiders of the Lost Ark desert chase scene. A little mining car near the truck is also a cinematic prop, having appeared in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’s mine scene. Guests also pass via a noisy “hit-or-miss” engine/generator set piece that pretends to power the lights hanging deep within the temple.
The majority of the line is inside the temple. Petroglyphs in “Marabic” warn temple guests of the rewards and dangers that await them deeper within the temple. Using a basic character substitution encoding, the glyphs can be translated into English. Guests were given decoder cards in the early months of the attraction’s existence; the cards are now only provided at special occasions or when made available. If you do not receive a decoder card, the code is simple to solve because each symbol closely resembles its corresponding letter in the English alphabet. The only exception is the letter I, which is shaped like an eye. Vowels show in red where the text is painted.
There are various interactive aspects in the queue. The ceiling in the “spike room” appears to be held up by multiple upright bamboo poles. Guests are frightened by the noises of the ceiling descending as the spikes begin to descend slowly toward them when the critical supporting pole is pushed or pulled. Large stone chunks released from the ceiling (caused by the diamond-shaped stones below) are barely held in place by wooden wedges and supports in the following region. Pulling on a rope further on in the Rotunda Calendar elicits responses from Dr. Dunfor Pullit, an out-of-sight archeologist sustained by the rope beneath the sarcophagus stone. Several boxes in the queue have important attributes; one marked “990 6753” corresponds to the number on the container housing the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Another crate is labeled “Deliver to Club Obi Wan,” referring to a fictional club at the start of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is itself a reference to the Star Wars character Obi Wan Kenobi. Eventually, guests are treated to a screening of a film about the finding, followed by Sallah’s safety advice. A copy of Life Magazine with Mickey and Minnie Mouse on the cover is in Professor Jones’ office.
Next Point of Interest: Hsi Lai Temple