Uploaded June 2018 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The Indiana Jones Adventure is an enhanced motion vehicle dark ride attraction at Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, based on the Indiana Jones film series. Guests accompany intrepid archaeologist Dr. Indiana Jones on a turbulent quest, aboard military troop transport vehicles, through a dangerous lost temple guarded by a supernatural power.
Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye is set in 1935 India and is told through twelve letters and telegrams scattered throughout the queue as well as three newsreels shown before guests board the attraction. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) has reunited missing fragments of a map scroll of parchment documenting the precise location of an ancient Bengalese temple. The Temple of the Forbidden Eye, containing countless intriguing artifacts buried beneath silt by a flood of the Lost River Delta over two thousand years ago, is undergoing excavation for archaeological research. The temple deity Mara seems to conditionally offer one of three gifts to all who come to the hallowed site: earthly riches, eternal youth, or visions of the future. The only condition is that one may never gaze into the eyes of Mara. Although Jones’ discovery, dubbed the "Temple of the Forbidden Eye" by the media, has set the archaeological community abuzz, his funding has run out. To raise money so the excavation can continue, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies / Bob Joles) has begun conducting guided tours. Good fortune has come to many of the tourists who survive, but others have not returned. Promising to find the missing tourists, Jones ventured inside the temple approximately one week ago, and has not yet reappeared. Jones also hoped to find the temple’s power source: the mysterious “Jewel of Power”, which Abner Ravenwood believed to be within an immense cavern, beyond the Gates of Doom. Marcus Brody has asked Sallah to continue conducting the tours, in the hope they may locate Dr. Jones.
Queue Line:
The attraction’s immersive and carefully detailed queue leads guests through dimly lit temple chambers and eerie passageways containing booby-trapped sections reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies.
The queue begins outside, winding past a 2.5 ton Mercedes-Benz troop transport truck. This is the actual vehicle used in the desert chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. A small mining car near the truck is a movie prop as well, used in the mine scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Guests also walk by a noisy steam-powered engine/generator set piece, which appears to power the lights strung deep into the temple.
Much of the queue is inside the temple itself. Throughout the bowels of the temple, petroglyphs in "Marabic" warn temple visitors of the rewards and perils that can be found further within. The glyphs can be translated into English using a simple character substitution encoding. In the early months of the attraction's existence, guests were given decoder cards; while these cards are no longer distributed, the code is easily solvable as each symbol bears a strong resemblance to its corresponding letter in the English alphabet. The sole exception is the letter I, which, appropriately, resembles an eye. Where the text is painted, vowels appear in red.
The queue contains several interactive features. In the “spike room”, the ceiling appears to be retained by several upright bamboo poles. When the key supporting pole is pushed, guests are startled by sounds of the ceiling dropping as the spikes begin to descend slowly toward them. In the next area, large stone blocks released from the ceiling (triggered by the diamond-shaped stones below) are barely kept in place by wooden wedges and supports. Further on, in the Rotunda Calendar, pulling on a rope triggers responses from Dr. Dunfor Pullit, an out-of-sight archeologist supported by the rope beneath the sarcophagus stone. Various crates throughout the queue contain some significant features; one marked with the number "990 6753" refers to the number on the crate holding the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Another crate is marked "Deliver to Club Obi Wan", referring to a fictional club at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, itself a reference to the character Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars.
Eventually, guests encounter a projection of a newsreel of the discovery, followed by a safety spiel by Sallah.
The Indiana Jones Adventure is an enhanced motion vehicle dark ride attraction at Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, based on the Indiana Jones film series. Guests accompany intrepid archaeologist Dr. Indiana Jones on a turbulent quest, aboard military troop transport vehicles, through a dangerous lost temple guarded by a supernatural power.
Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye is set in 1935 India and is told through twelve letters and telegrams scattered throughout the queue as well as three newsreels shown before guests board the attraction. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) has reunited missing fragments of a map scroll of parchment documenting the precise location of an ancient Bengalese temple. The Temple of the Forbidden Eye, containing countless intriguing artifacts buried beneath silt by a flood of the Lost River Delta over two thousand years ago, is undergoing excavation for archaeological research. The temple deity Mara seems to conditionally offer one of three gifts to all who come to the hallowed site: earthly riches, eternal youth, or visions of the future. The only condition is that one may never gaze into the eyes of Mara. Although Jones’ discovery, dubbed the "Temple of the Forbidden Eye" by the media, has set the archaeological community abuzz, his funding has run out. To raise money so the excavation can continue, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies / Bob Joles) has begun conducting guided tours. Good fortune has come to many of the tourists who survive, but others have not returned. Promising to find the missing tourists, Jones ventured inside the temple approximately one week ago, and has not yet reappeared. Jones also hoped to find the temple’s power source: the mysterious “Jewel of Power”, which Abner Ravenwood believed to be within an immense cavern, beyond the Gates of Doom. Marcus Brody has asked Sallah to continue conducting the tours, in the hope they may locate Dr. Jones.
Queue Line:
The attraction’s immersive and carefully detailed queue leads guests through dimly lit temple chambers and eerie passageways containing booby-trapped sections reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies.
The queue begins outside, winding past a 2.5 ton Mercedes-Benz troop transport truck. This is the actual vehicle used in the desert chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. A small mining car near the truck is a movie prop as well, used in the mine scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Guests also walk by a noisy steam-powered engine/generator set piece, which appears to power the lights strung deep into the temple.
Much of the queue is inside the temple itself. Throughout the bowels of the temple, petroglyphs in "Marabic" warn temple visitors of the rewards and perils that can be found further within. The glyphs can be translated into English using a simple character substitution encoding. In the early months of the attraction's existence, guests were given decoder cards; while these cards are no longer distributed, the code is easily solvable as each symbol bears a strong resemblance to its corresponding letter in the English alphabet. The sole exception is the letter I, which, appropriately, resembles an eye. Where the text is painted, vowels appear in red.
The queue contains several interactive features. In the “spike room”, the ceiling appears to be retained by several upright bamboo poles. When the key supporting pole is pushed, guests are startled by sounds of the ceiling dropping as the spikes begin to descend slowly toward them. In the next area, large stone blocks released from the ceiling (triggered by the diamond-shaped stones below) are barely kept in place by wooden wedges and supports. Further on, in the Rotunda Calendar, pulling on a rope triggers responses from Dr. Dunfor Pullit, an out-of-sight archeologist supported by the rope beneath the sarcophagus stone. Various crates throughout the queue contain some significant features; one marked with the number "990 6753" refers to the number on the crate holding the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Another crate is marked "Deliver to Club Obi Wan", referring to a fictional club at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, itself a reference to the character Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars.
Eventually, guests encounter a projection of a newsreel of the discovery, followed by a safety spiel by Sallah.


![Big Thunder Mountain Railroad POV at Disneyland Park
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a mine train roller coaster located in Frontierland at several Disneyland-style Disney Parks worldwide. The ride exists at Disneyland Park (California) and the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Park (Paris) as Big Thunder Mountain. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is also the name of the fictional rail line the roller coaster depicts.
Although the details of the backstory vary from park to park, all follow the same general story arcs. Some time in the late 1800s, gold was discovered on Big Thunder Mountain in the American Southwest. Overnight, a small mining town became a thriving one (the name of the town varies from ride to ride. In the California ride, the town is known as Rainbow Ridge. In the Florida version, the town is known as Tumbleweed, and in Paris, the town is known as Thunder Mesa). Mining was prosperous, and an extensive line of mine trains was set up to transport the ore. Unknown to the settlers, the Mountain was a sacred spot to local Native Americans and was cursed.
Before long, the settlers desecration of the mountain caused a great tragedy, which, depending on the park, is usually depicted to be an earthquake (in the Paris and California versions of the ride), a tsunami (in the Tokyo version of the ride), a flash flood (in the Florida version of the ride), which befell the mines and town, and the town was abandoned. A man was wandering around and boarded an already moving car, interested. He was known to be quite bold and hung on tight as the train went very fast, and he had a wild ride. When he finished, he had many handfuls of gold, and proudly left with his riches. Some time later, the locomotives were found to be racing around the mountain on their own, without engineers or a crew. The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was founded in the old mining camp to allow wanderers to take rides on the possessed trains.
The detailed backstory, while present in park literature and training materials, is not communicated to park guests directly. The station buildings on all four versions of the ride are themed to appearance of a mining company office from the mid to late 19th century. In the Disneyland, CA park, there is music and laughing in one of the saloons, and a typewriter is heard from a newspaper office. The mountains themselves are themed to the red rock formations of the American Southwest. The rock work designs in the California version are based on the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. In the Florida, Tokyo and Paris versions of the ride, the rockwork designs are based on the rising buttes that are located in Utah and Arizonas Monument Valley. Special care was taken by the Imagineers to make it appear that the rocks were there originally, and the track was built around the rocks, unlike a number of earlier mine rides, which were built the other way around (by sculpting the rocks around the tracks). There is also a dinosaur skeleton that the train passes by, built into the side of the mountain. A cracked eggshell is nearby, and there is a pleasant lake with water that is shot up while the train passes on the warmer days] Sound effects of a typical locomotive operation are piped into the surrounding scenery to add realism to guests viewing the ride from observation platforms, including the steam whistle sounding, even though there is no whistle displayed on the locomotives. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad POV at Disneyland Park](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KIH7p3EttIM/mqdefault.jpg)







