When you walk into the back of Adventureland, you find the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. This stone structure houses the Indiana Jones Adventure. While the ride attracts most of the attention, the building itself is an example of architectural storytelling, literally a bridge between the park and an attraction’s world.
Imagineers faced a logistical challenge during the planning phase. The ride system required a show building located behind the berm. This created a long path for guests. The design team created an excavation site to cover this distance. This choice allows guests to walk through a dig site managed by local archaeologists. You pass through layers of history as you move deeper into the structure.
From the beginning, bamboo supports create a feeling of instability, like everything around you could collapse at any moment. The use of weathered stone and dim lighting makes the building feel like a place that has been abandoned for centuries.
Inside the main building, the architecture follows the premise of an ancient temple built to honor a deity named Mara. The walls feature Maraglyphics, a fictional language that warns visitors about the dangers of looking at the deity. The props scattered throughout the queue add to the immersion, with drilling equipment, crates of supplies, and maps that show the team is actively studying the temple.
Take the rotunda as an example. Though most guests don’t really spend a lot of time sightseeing in the rotunda, this room serves as the transition point where the backstory is explained. A stone disc tracks the stars and the alignment of the planets. This room uses lighting to focus on the murals that warn about the three gifts of Mara…and their dangers.
The Temple of the Forbidden Eye shows how practical constraints can lead to effective design. The park’s logistics made the long walkway a necessity, since Imagineers had to get guests underneath the berm. And then Imagineers cleverly used that extended space to create storytelling, peeling back layers and layers to tell the story: this building is very old, there’s a mysterious deity here, there’s a compelling reason Indiana Jones risked coming here, etc.
In the end, the Temple is a great reminder that the most compelling features in the park often stem from the need to solve a functional problem. Left brain and right brain working together!