On March 3, 1995, Disneyland officially opened their latest ride Indiana Jones Adventure, Temple of the Forbidden Eye. I'd generally describe it as a cross between Star Tours, Pirates of the Carribean, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. While Star Tours has hydraulics to move the whole room artificially, IJA has hydraulics on the individual cars that go through the ride. This makes it possible to give the appearance of going down stairs, over bumps, or around corners too fast while the vehicle is in reality staying in calm control.
IJA has audio-animatronics to rival (and even surpass) those in Pirates, notably a good likeness of Indy himself who appears at several places in the ride. Harrison Ford didn't do the voice of Indy for the ride, but with the other noises going on (the engine, tires, soundtrack, etc.) it's really difficult to tell. Also like both Pirates and Mr. Toad, IJA gives you things to look at in all directions for basically the whole duration of the ride. As in the Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, IJA has several things that jump out at you.
Unlike any of those rides, IJA has variation. The cars are programmed to randomly break down, speed up, and slow down. The cars avoid collisions by communicating with each other electronically. At each place you encounter the audio-animatronic Indy, he has several things that he can say to you. Furthermore, at the very beginning of the ride you can go through one of three possible paths, which actually go on the same physical route, though the imagery is different on each path due to different projections on scrims. Combining all of these factors means that each ride on IJA will be a fairly unique experience. The first three times I rode this, I went through 2 different doors, stalled in 3 different places (no stall on one trip, two on another), and heard several different comments from AA-Indy.
Another neat feature of this ride is the line. Like Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin and Star Tours, IJA has a bunch of stuff in the line (or pre-ride, if you prefer) to set up the story of the ride. In the case of IJA, this includes encoded messages on the walls (see decoder card below), films setting up the story behind the temple, booby trapped rooms, and a slew of artifacts. They really did a good job on this one. The first couple of times through, I was actually sad that the line was moving too fast to allow me to absorb everything. Several times the line was held up while people tried to figure out the cryptic messages.
Since I enjoyed the pre-ride so much, I decided to take some pictures of it to share with those of you who haven't had the opportunity to go on ther ride yet (don't worry, no ride spoilers here). Here they are:
Here's a couple of pictures someone sent me of materials from the promotional package for the Indy ride:
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(78 KB JPG)(provided by Tracy Hyche)
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