Disneyland cleaned every skull, mummy and snake during a three-month refurbishment of Indiana Jones Adventure that refreshed the classic dark ride without disturbing any of the beloved rubble and debris in the crumbling Temple of the Forbidden Eye.
The Indiana Jones Adventure attraction will reopen on Friday, March 17 after an extensive renovation by the Disneyland operations and facility services teams along with Walt Disney Imagineering.
I got to ride Indiana Jones Adventure a few times on Thursday, March 16 before the attraction reopened to the public and found my favorite Disneyland ride fully restored to its glory days.
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Indiana Jones Adventure feels brand new once again just like when the thrill ride first opened in 1995. The Indy attraction that visitors and cast members alike have been missing for so long is finally back again.
Imagineering “plussed up” the ride with two new digital effects scenes designed to demonstrate the power of Mara, the antagonist deity within the Temple of the Forbidden Eye at the center of the story unfolding in the attraction.
“Our additions to Indiana Jones Adventure add touches of new magic that enhance its already established storyline,” Imagineering executive creative director Kim Irvine said in a statement released by Disneyland. “Mara taunts guests even further with a powerful, electric-like energy and frenetic apparitions. This force of Mara turns a possible passageway escape into a rubble of dust.”
No new storylines were introduced into the Disneyland attraction from the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” film debuting in theaters in June.
The Indy refurbishment teams cleaned and painted the projection surfaces throughout the attraction and refreshed the scenic elements throughout the extensive queue.
Every skull was individually cleaned and all 40 mummies were refreshed. Video projectors were refocused and lighting fixtures were replaced. The large audio-animatronic snake and rolling ball in the finale have been repaired.
Digital projections throughout the attraction are much sharper, brighter and more colorful. All of the black light scenes have been touched up and relit.
Projections that haven’t worked for years or were too degraded to see are now visible and more vibrant — on the doors as riders enter the temple, behind the doors Indy holds shut, on Mara’s face that we aren’t supposed to look at and on a scrim screen with a screaming demon in the bridge room.
The exterior queue has been re-landscaped, the interior queue has been repainted and the bamboo supports in the queue tunnels have been replaced. Interactive elements in the queue like the rope in the well that visitors can pull are working again.
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A few effects that fans remember from the early days of the attraction are likely never coming back. The rotating trio of doors that determined the fate of riders at the beginning of the attraction still don’t shift back and forth like they once did — proving too problematic to be worth the trouble.