Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent: Animal Kingdom ride gets a name, story, and Harrison Ford animatronic
Disney revealed the name of Animal Kingdom's Indiana Jones attraction at D23: Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent. Harrison Ford is the model for the ride's animatronic, a first for any Disney park, and the story sends riders into the Maya Underworld to escape a giant serpent called the Tsukan inside the new Tropical Americas land. Concept art at the Walt Disney Imagineering pavilion also gave a first look inside the queue, an active Maya dig site where projected Indy footage plays as guests walk through.
Disney has named the Indiana Jones attraction coming to Disney's Animal Kingdom: Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent. The reveal came during the "Horizons: A Carousel of Progress" showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, where Imagineers Michael Hundgen and Chris Beatty also confirmed that Harrison Ford himself is the model for the ride's new Audio-Animatronics figure, a first for any Disney park.
Key Details
- Attraction Name: Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent
- Location: Tropical Americas, the new 11-acre land at Disney's Animal Kingdom, replacing DinoLand U.S.A.
- Animatronic: Harrison Ford is the model for the Indiana Jones figure, his first face on a Disney attraction anywhere
- Story: An escape through the Maya Underworld, guarded by a serpent creature called the Tsukan
- The queue: Concept art at the Walt Disney Imagineering pavilion shows an active Maya dig site, with projected Indy footage playing inside the queue itself
- Also in the Land: Antonio's Fiesta de Encanto, El Carrusel de los Animalitos, a Maya-inspired play area, plus shopping and dining
- Announced At: D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event 2026
Harrison Ford is the face of the animatronic
The presentation opened with a recorded message from Harrison Ford, who thanked fans for following the character across decades of films. He then shared the headline news himself: he is the actual model for the next Indiana Jones Audio-Animatronics figure, and this is the first time his face will appear on a Disney attraction anywhere in the world. Indy figures have existed since the original Indiana Jones Adventure opened at Disneyland in 1995, but none of them wore Ford's actual likeness, so a Ford-modeled figure is genuinely new territory for the franchise and a signal of how central Indy himself will be to the ride.
Later in the showcase, Hundgen and Beatty returned to the subject and displayed the digital model that Walt Disney Imagineering is using to build the figure.
The name: Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent
The two Imagineers confirmed the attraction's title publicly for the first time. It joins Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye at Disneyland and Indiana Jones et le Temple du Peril at Disneyland Paris as the third Indy attraction worldwide, and the first at Walt Disney World.
A story rooted in Maya culture
The team also shared the first details about the ride's cultural inspiration. The goal is to pair a classic Indiana Jones adventure with the kind of cultural and natural detail Animal Kingdom is built around, a park dedicated to creatures both real and imagined. The ride takes guests beneath an ancient temple ruin and draws on Maya culture and its connection to nature.
The temple entrance facade, previously seen only in renderings, is now under construction, and the showcase included a behind-the-scenes look at it. The project team is working with archaeologists, anthropologists, and Maya cultural experts to keep the details accurate to the region, and the attraction will feature original Maya artwork created for the ride. Imagineers have made research trips to Honduras to study the region's culture, customs, and folklore firsthand, with the Copan archaeological site, one of the best-preserved cities of the ancient Maya civilization, serving as a key reference for the attraction and the land around it.
A first look inside the queue
Updated project material on display at the Walt Disney Imagineering pavilion at D23 also gives the first released look at the attraction's interior, after months of exterior temple artwork only. The queue concept art reads as a cave-like archaeological site: scaffolding dominates the middle of the frame, surrounded by walls carrying Maya glyphs and what appears to be part of a temple structure, with a shovel beside a freshly dug hole in the floor. In the upper left, a projector rig casts footage of Indiana Jones onto a screen.
That projector is the detail worth pausing on. The obvious read would be a pre-show room where a group gathers, watches a briefing and moves on. Instead, the projected scene sits inside the queue itself, playing while guests keep walking, so the story setup happens in the line rather than in a dedicated holding space. That is how Disney has built its layered Animal Kingdom queues for years, in the register of Expedition Everest and Kilimanjaro Safaris, and it keeps the ride's throughput from bottlenecking on a timed room.
Into the Maya Underworld
Guests meet Dr. Jones as he explores a temple near a cenote, a once water-filled underground cave. Local legend holds that the passage leads to the Maya Underworld and is guarded by a serpentine creature called the Tsukan. Riders get pulled through a portal into the Underworld and have to escape its dangers: monstrous bats, oversized scorpions, fire, and, naturally, snakes.
The Tsukan appears throughout the ride, building to a final confrontation Beatty joked would cement a fear of snakes for life. Disney showed the crowd a first look at the gigantic Audio-Animatronics serpent, which towers over the Imagineers building it; a full-scale sculpt of the figure went on display on the D23 floor. The team is sculpting the figure by hand rather than relying entirely on digital fabrication, a choice meant to make it more lifelike up close.
The rest of Tropical Americas
The ride anchors Tropical Americas, the 11-acre land that replaces DinoLand U.S.A., first announced at Destination D23 in 2023 and expanded on by then Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D'Amaro at D23 in 2024. Disney says the land is part of the largest slate of expansion projects in Walt Disney World history. It will hold two headliner attractions, the Indiana Jones ride and Antonio's Fiesta de Encanto, the Encanto ride named at the same showcase, along with shopping and dining.
Families get two more additions. El Carrusel de los Animalitos is a new carousel with 22 hand-carved animals drawn from Disney and Pixar stories, including Scuttle, Squirt, Pua, Pascal, Simba, Eeyore, Kuzco, and Heimlich. Nearby, a Maya-inspired play area lets kids dig for artifacts and explore the rainforest setting hands-on.
Why this matters
This is the most detail Disney has given on the Animal Kingdom expansion since the land was announced, and the pieces now have names, a story, a villain, visible construction, and a first look at the queue. A Harrison Ford-modeled animatronic gives Walt Disney World a version of Indy that even Disneyland's ride never had, and the hand-sculpted Tsukan and research-driven Maya theming position Jade Serpent as a flagship dark ride rather than a retheme. Disney has not yet announced an opening date for the attraction or for Tropical Americas as a whole, so guests planning around the new land should watch for timing news in the months ahead.