(March 3, 1995—Present) BACKSTORY: Due to the success of “Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!” at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, George Lucas joined with Disney to create a new attraction with a backdrop “set in the Lost Delta of India, circa 1935.” IJA is the 3rd collaboration between WDI and Lucasfilm (Captain EO and Star Tours). Early concepts included a walk-through adventure and a high-speed mine car adventure within a temple. To avoid a long queue, Imagineers considered using Jungle Cruise boats to shuttle guests to the loading area. According to Imagineer Eddie Sotto: One of the biggest challenges was how you get people to the attraction and where you put the attraction; it's so big you couldn't locate it anywhere except outside of the berm of the park which presented a big issue when it came down to how you were going to put people in line so I think part of this was taking out the Pirates overflow area next door and sort of using...and remember we had the concept of the walk-through with the spikes and all that, well those kind of ideas came back and became the queue to Indiana Jones, so we ended up with that same experience, but without a guide that took you all the way back to the attraction, and it's kind of funny how that worked out, a lot of people seem to like the queue as much as they like the ride, so that was an interesting innovation in itself was how the queue was hidden. ”
Construction started Aug. 1993 with 400+ Imagineers and a core team of nearly 100. It entailed rerouting Jungle Cruise, the creation of .5 mile queue area, demolishing part of the “Eeyore” parking lot, and building a 50,000 sf structure for the ride. Originally sponsored by AT&T. The “Mara-glyphics” on the attraction were decodable with decoder cards that were once given out at the attraction. Art Director Chuck Ballew was their creator. 16 troop-transport vehicles has its own onbaord computer system that monitors audio & lighting, making it capable of 160,000 unique journey combinations. |
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)