Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril: the ride’s backstory

The story is set in the 1940s. Henry Jones Jr., known to everyone as Indiana Jones, is as much an archaeology professor as an adventurer. He sets up an expedition into thick jungle in search of a lost city, The Lost City.

As the dig goes on, his team doesn’t find the city it hoped for, but something else: the remains of a temple forgotten for more than a thousand years. The find is so huge that the expedition settles in for good. The team digs into the hill, pitches a camp and builds a small network of tracks to haul away whatever it unearths.

That’s the starting point. The whole setting you walk through captures that exact moment: a dig site in full swing, frozen as if the archaeologists had only just left. For the practical side (queue, minimum height, how intense it is), see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril.

The temple uncovered here is dedicated to Shiva, one of the great gods of Hindu mythology. Two giant cobra statues guard the entrance staircase, one on each side. This serpent, the Naga, is a symbol linked to Shiva and is often shown coiled around his neck.

And this is where the ride’s designers slipped in a nod fans love: in the films, Indiana Jones is terrified of snakes. Having two giant cobras guard the temple is exactly the kind of detail that ties the setting to the character. The bravest hero in the world, stuck facing the thing that scares him most.

This is where the storytelling really happens. As you move through the queue, you’re not just walking down a waiting corridor: you’re visiting the expedition’s camp. Everything is designed to make you believe the archaeologists left in a hurry and left everything where it was.

In the story, the dig site’s mine carts were used to carry the treasures out of the temple. The expedition left them on the tracks. You, the visitor, become an adventurer in turn, climbing into these abandoned carts and hurtling through the ruins at full speed.

The mine cart ride is no accident: it echoes Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the 1984 film where the heroes race along the tracks of a mine. If that scene rings a bell, it’s exactly the feel Disney wanted to recreate here.

For what it’s like once you’re on board (the thrills, the loop, how it really feels) and all the practical information (queue, minimum height), everything is on the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril page.

Now for the behind-the-scenes, the real story of the ride. It opened on 30 July 1993 and was officially inaugurated on 9 November 1993 with George Lucas in attendance, in Adventureland, a little over a year after the park opened. And it was no ordinary rollercoaster: it was the first coaster in a Disney park to have an inversion, in other words a loop.

Until then, Disney had always refused to turn its visitors upside down. The Temple of Peril broke that rule.

The ride was designed by the Imagineers of Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s in-house creative studio, led by Tony Baxter, one of the big names behind the Paris park. The engineering was handed to Swiss manufacturer Intamin, with the company Giovanola building the structure.

Tony Baxter summed up the idea simply: these are mine carts going up and down over the surface of the temple to clear away the rubble and put the treasures back in place. So the coaster tells the story of the dig itself.

The original plan was far more ambitious. Disney dreamt of a full Indiana Jones land, a whole area devoted to the adventurer, with a much longer mine cart ride and indoor scenes inspired by the films. But the park’s early years were very tough financially, and the plans had to be scaled back.

From that big project came a compact but well-crafted coaster, set on a hill in Adventureland. The need was clear: to offer a thrill ride while Space Mountain wouldn’t open for another two or three years. So the Temple of Peril played that role, providing the thrills until the rest arrived.

The ride went through an unusual chapter. To revive interest, the teams decided to run it backwards. For a little over four years, the carts ran the same track but in reverse, under the name "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril: Backwards!".

It wasn’t just a change of direction. The car bodies had to be turned round on their chassis, two seats added per car and, above all, a whole host of scenery and lighting moved so that riders would never see the technical backstage areas by looking the wrong way. Some sections of track were even reprofiled for comfort.

Then the ride went back to its original direction, before a major refurbishment years later, with a structure rebuilt in real stone.

The setting is packed with references to the Indiana Jones films. These details are what make a Disney ride so much fun: you can love the story just by knowing where to look.

These details are only part of the treasure hunt. The whole park is full of nods and in-jokes: for the famous Hidden Mickeys as well as the other Disneyland Paris secrets, I have dedicated articles that reveal every hiding place.

If you enjoyed this story, the park is full of rides with their own hidden backstory. You’ll find all of them on the history of Disneyland Paris hub. And for more backstories, take a look at the Thunder Mesa saga, the story of Pirates of the Caribbean, Tower of Terror, the Ratatouille ride or Avengers Campus.

For all the practical information about the ride (minimum height, queue, how intense it is), see the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril page.