You may or may not remember a previous post where I declared my reborn love for Disney after witnessing the incredible production value of everything that goes into Disneyland. While that love most definitely remains, I revisited the park this past weekend… and felt compelled to analyze what I felt was the one, single piece of Disneyland that left me feeling disappointed: The Indiana Jones Ride.

Yes, I’ve seen the movies and I do like them. I’m aware that this ride is the favorite of many of my friends, and that most riders happily wait in line for over an hour for this 3-4 minute experience. But for whatever reason, this ride just didn’t do it for me. I felt the same way this summer, but after my second trip, I was able to pay a lot more attention… and I think I’ve been able to hone in on some of the specific reasons. Feel free to check it out under the cut.

What is all boils down to, I think, is that the ride doesn’t feel as interactive as most of the other rides at Disney. The ride is thrilling (if, like me, you like rides that are bumpy and jerky – in a good way), but it feels more like you’re on a ride rather than part of an Indiana Jones adventure. It’s pretty passive.

So why is this? In my opinion:

It’s too atmospheric.

While this might sound like a good thing, I say that it’s too atmospheric because so many areas of the ride are atmospheric at the expense of having memorable focal points. They might have been realistic or a great reference to the movies, but there were too few things that ‘popped’ or caught your attention. For example, I can probably describe to you 1/4 to 1/3 of the different ‘beats’ from the ride – the rest were either forgettable, or too bland to describe effectively.

The room full of skulls is the epitome of this. It sounds pretty bland, doesn’t it? It was actually pretty phenomenal looking, but all in all, it was pretty bland, and that’s why I couldn’t describe it to you very well. All of the skulls looked like all 0f the other skulls, they were all the same size, there was no full skeleton anywhere, no story being told… just lots and lots of skulls that all blended into each other. And I remember being bored less than halfway through the room, on what was a pretty quick visit to begin with. It’s because the room was too atmospheric for it’s own good, with no focal points or distinguishing, attention-catching, or otherwise evocative aspects.

The existing focal points are timed poorly. 

What comes to mind first is the giant snake; it’s not fun at all. It moves way too slow, especially for the quick speed of the ride, and doesn’t nearly move far enough forward to make the audience actually react to it (rather than perhaps smile at the reference to the movies, but wouldn’t we prefer to startle or spook them a little bit?). Another moment that exemplifies this is when a skeleton comes forward out of a cavern as the car is racing by – and I literally missed it completely the first time I went on this ride, it went so slow and moved so little.

Likewise, there are several moments that I think could have been drawn out, such as the crossing of the bridge over lava and the escape from the giant boulder. In the former the car slows down, but barely enough for it to register before the moment is over. In the latter, while it didn’t particularly bother me, my friend said that he really wanted more of a chase sequence with the boulder, and I do think it would have been easy to get a lot more leverage out of what is unequivocally the most famous moment of the IP. Both of these moments could have been drawn out for a lot more benefit, I thought… not to mention that varying the lengths of the moments would have helped it seem a lot less formulaic and a lot more exciting.

Too much of the ride is in darkness. 

It may sound stupid and I didn’t realize this one until my friend mentioned it, but way too much of the ride is in darkness. The bumpy motion of the car is exciting and the idea of ‘not knowing what’s next’ is totally viable for this ride, but it’s way overused in this experience. There were quite a few moments where I had time to stop and think to myself, okay, we’re in a cave, got it, are we there yet? Or worse yet, let my mind wander. Perhaps this just means that that the dark moments were too long, not too numerous (I would argue both, but will reserve judgment until I have a chance to pay closer attention).

The ride does use shadows to pretty cool effects one or twice, and realistically, it’s appropriate for the experience. But there should never be a moment when a rider get bored, and with nothing by the fun-yet-white-noise-esque bumpiness to concentrate on in some of the dark periods, it can most definitely happen.

All in all, Indiana Jones wasn’t a bad ride. I happily went on it this second time, and it had a lot of highlights – I really enjoyed the moment when Indiana swings from a rope overhead as if he’s going to jump into your car and join you, and the lava aesthetics were pretty sweet. But overall I would call it one of the weaker rides at Disneyland, especially after all the build-up from friend’s recommendations.

Though please keep in mind that this is like calling out someone as the worst player on the Steelers, or the worst show on Broadway. It’s still incredible, it still got there in the first place, and is still better than 98% of everything else in its category. It simply doesn’t shine quite as brightly from the shadows of the 2% surrounding it.