Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent is the official title of the attraction anchoring Tropical Americas at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and for the first time anywhere, Harrison Ford himself is the model for the Indiana Jones Audio-Animatronics figure. Both reveals came at the Horizons showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, held at the Honda Center on Saturday, August 15.
Ford Lends His Face, Fear Of Snakes Included
Ford opened the segment in a surprise video message, thanking fans for riding along on decades of adventures before revealing that he is the actual model for the new Indy figure. Lucasfilm calls it the first time his face has appeared on a Disney attraction anywhere in the world. The Disney Parks account summed the reveal up on X with three words that will follow this ride around: fear of snakes included.
Imagineers Michael Hundgen and Chris Beatty, who led the presentation, displayed the digital model being used to build the figure. Indy has been in Disney parks for three decades without Ford’s face attached to one: Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure has run since 1995 and Tokyo DisneySea’s since 2001, and Deadline notes this will be Walt Disney World’s first Indiana Jones attraction, following versions in Anaheim, Tokyo and Paris.
Into The Maya Underworld
Guests rendezvous with Dr. Jones as he explores a mysterious temple beside a cenote, the once water filled underground caves found across the Yucatán. Local legend holds that the passageway leads directly to the Maya Underworld, and that it is protected by a serpentine creature called the Tsukán. The ride proper begins when riders are pulled through a portal into the Underworld itself, and the escape runs a gauntlet of monstrous bats, larger than life scorpions, fire and, inevitably, snakes.
Beatty said the Tsukán will not be a creature that appears once and vanishes. Guests meet it repeatedly across the attraction, building to a final confrontation. Disney showed the Tsukán Audio-Animatronics figure at the panel, and the scale is the story: it towers over the Imagineers standing beside it, and the team is sculpting the creature by hand to give it more physical presence. Hundgen and Beatty also showed an animated first look at one key scene and a behind the scenes look at the temple facade, which is being built now.
The Follow Up Looks
Disney kept feeding the story in the days after the showcase. New concept art followed, including a first look at the queue, plus additional photos of the Maya temple structure under construction and another look at the serpent rendered beside a doomed human figure for scale. Imagineering also confirmed the queue will feature authentic Maya murals, with an important caveat carried in the reveal itself: the mural pieces shown so far are concepts, not the final designs.
Joe Rohde Says The Team Did Not Invent The Tsukán
Disney Legend Joe Rohde, who built Animal Kingdom and has been posting about Tropical Americas ever since the showcase, returned to the subject a week later, on August 22, with the point that matters most for how this attraction should be read. The Tsukán, he says, is a living contemporary Maya myth, in the same way the yeti is a living Himalayan oral tradition. It is, in his framing, not something the team made up.
The parallel he draws with Expedition Everest goes further than shared provenance. Rohde describes the Tsukán as another kind of environmental protector, a creature whose role in the myth is to defend the sanctity, purity and fertility of the cenote and the water held inside it. That is the argument for why an Indiana Jones ride belongs at this particular park rather than any other: the monster is not set dressing, it is a guardian of a water source, which is about as Animal Kingdom as a premise gets. Rohde credited executive creative director Joan Hartwig and her team with doing the homework, as he says every Animal Kingdom team has.
In an earlier post he praised Imagineer Brianna Pfost’s depth of knowledge on Maya art, explained the reasoning behind the Chaac temple model, and argued that the team took a generic assignment to build an Indiana Jones attraction and turned it into something that could only sit here, by refocusing the story on nature, animals and the human relationship to both.
Built With Maya Experts
The story leans on Maya culture and its connection to the natural world, a fit for a park dedicated to creatures real and imagined. Disney says the project team is working with archaeologists, anthropologists and Maya experts so that every element is accurate to the region, and that the attraction will feature original Maya artwork throughout. Imagineering promises what it describes as revolutionary Audio-Animatronics figures, and the storyline is original to the ride rather than adapted from any one film.
Tropical Americas has been rising fast on the former DinoLand U.S.A. site all year, with recent aerial photos showing major progress across the construction zone. Between the Jade Serpent, the Encanto attraction and the land’s carousel, Animal Kingdom’s expansion now has names, stories and faces, including the most famous face in adventure movies. Disney has not announced an opening date for the attraction.
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