Coaster Kingdom
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Indiana Jones Temple of Peril: Backwards! (Disneyland Paris)
Although Disneyland Paris was
hardly swamped initially with visitors and the media coverage surrounding it
hardly benevolent, anything that got the park into the press was good, whether
it was complimentary or not was merely academic. In the long term, this
tentative start benefited the park with a spate of investment around the mid
1990s which did enough to bring in enough visitors to disband the press and
leave them to cover more worthy news stories.
One
thing that was learnt from the dubious start Disneyland Paris had was that the
French are really not into shows and spectacles in the way that America were.
The French visited for the rides, and the only coaster at the park, Thunder
Mountain, was subject to audaciously long queues even in off-peak periods.
A
quick fix was sought, and in less than a year, the quick fix opened, ironically,
to longer queues than Thunder Mountain. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril
was the first Disney coaster to invert riders head-over-heals, and as an
experiment, it led the way for other coasters to follow.
Although
the name isn’t synonymous with many Disney attractions, it was Intamin that
were approached to supply the ride. Intamin developed the ride from the Pinfari
Zyklon, a small single looping coaster with tight-banked turns and sharp drops.
Due
to the thoughtlessness of the designers, the low capacity and very nature of the
ride attracted unbearable queues, and a few years later, the eight seater trains
were re-designed so as to hold 50% more people, another was added, and to
attract the queues back, the trains were flipped around so that they ran the
entire circuit backwards.
The
ride resides in the sundry Adventureland, home of Pirates of the Caribbean and
the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. It is actually quite a way out the back of
the park, and right on the outskirts.
As
you approach the ride in a path shrouded in lush, tropical flora, the decaying
temple around which the cars hurtle around the scaffolding surrounding the
crumbling structure.
The
queue starts away from the temple to your right. The entrance is rather
inconspicuous and at the outset takes you into the undergrowth. The temple was
at the centre of an archaeological dig by Jones. It now stands abandoned, for
unknown reasons, and as a haunting reminder of this, the queue takes you past
the adventurers’ campsite with an abandoned jeep and canvas tent.
As
the queue now bears to the left, the temple now stands before you. The large
sandstone style construction is falling into a state of disrepair, the aging
structure surrounded in ropes, scaffold and the track rising and falling around
it. Huge stone steps start your accent up the temple before you turn to the left
and past a crumbling archway.
Every
few minutes, conversation is broken by the thunder of a train swelling into a
roar as the two-car train hurtles around the archway, fully inverting in front
of irresolute riders. As the train disappears, the archway concealing the
360-degree loop is all that remains to remind you of the forthcoming terrors
that lay in wait.
The
pathway soon takes you over the small station, before a staircase takes you onto
the station platform. The best place to ride is undoubtedly the end that looks
like the front. This is the back of the train and offers great visuals and the
faster ride.
The
platform is tiny and can only take a minimal amount of people. Picking and
choosing where you wish to sit is quite awkward and not worth the effort.
The
trains are really ugly. They look like wooden boxes and are probably the most
awkward to get into. The high sides and deep-down nature of the trains mean you
have to virtually take a running jump. Once you countermand the subconscious
urge to face the direction of travel, you turn 180 degrees to board, slither
into your seat, and pull down the restraints before the train is dispatched,
backwards.
Visuals
are limited only to the back of the car in front unless you are in the front of
a car, and legroom is very limited. The train is tyre-driven backwards around a
clockwise 180-degree turn that will smoothly feed you onto the lift-hill.
The
lift hill is actually quite fun, and now that you are going backwards, it
affords you reasonable views of the park wherever you’re sitting. The temple
structure is to your left and as you begin to look down on the more sizeable
parts of this structure, the train uprights and accelerates into a sharp turn.
As
the train straightens out, it curls over the top of a sharp drop accelerating as
it does before rising up on the opposite side of the temple before traversing
another sharp turn.
Another
drop into the structure of the temple comes more predictably with the binding
rise and turn following it. As the theme continues, it becomes more and more of
an effort to keep the head free from being knocked by the poorly engineered
track-work that the train runs on.
An abrupt turn and drop throw you deeper into the edifice before your head begins to be pulled forward, the incline gets steeper, and steeper as you begin to see the ground appear and disappear in a flash, the train tightly wraps around a compact vertical loop as the sky darts past in a moment before you’re up righted and thrown into what I would say is the worst part of the ride.
The track following the loop is taken at high speed and is a nauseating culmination of intensely unpleasant banked helixes and turns. As you spiral round and round, you begin feeling heady, not only because of these brutally unpleasant turns, but also because you have been bashed so much up until this point.
Your
wish comes true and you clatter into the final brake run. A slow advance towards
the station ends with the bars rising and you leaving feeling rather dizzy and
disorientated.
This
is probably the only ride I can think of at Disneyland Paris that has blatant
disregard for a story line or plot. It is rare you go on a ride at Disney and
don’t actually feel that you are a part of the adventure. On Indiana Jones,
you feel that you are riding a coaster around a temple and you don’t
understand why.
Even
if a ride doesn’t tell a story, the theming should make up for it. Indiana
Jones is unable to achieve this either. Whilst the theming is not appalling,
Disneyland Paris have set a standard and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril
doesn’t come anywhere near carrying this metaphorical baton of consistency.
The
ride too is hardly inspiring. The coaster it is based on is not Italy’s finest
export it has to be said, and it is a bit strange, therefore, that Disney
approached Intamin to copy the ride. Although it is slightly more professional
(for want of a better word), it is still rough, lacking, and now the trains run
backwards, it can be quite painful if you are new to the ride and don’t know
what is coming next.
The
capacity issue has improved now that each car holds six (a train, twelve) and
that the ride now operates Fast Pass, the Disney scheme that allows you to
return to the ride at a designated time.
For
the amount of hype Disneyland Paris apply to Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Peril, it really fails as a ride, as a major attraction (which, at the moment it
is), it fails and as an entertaining and rousing ride, it fails.
The
ride was incredibly rushed from drawing board to opening, and it shows,
blatantly.
1/5 Marcus Sheen