Harrison Ford is putting the fedora back on, just not for another movie.
Harrison Ford famously played the whip-cracking archaeologist-adventurer, Indiana Jones, in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels. Disney announced its latest attraction, “Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent,” at the D23 fan event in Anaheim, held August 14 to 16. The brand-new dark ride set is coming to Tropical Americas, a new 11-acre land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, with 84-year-old Harrison Ford lending his likeness to the Indiana Jones animatronic riders will see. The site used to be Dinoland U.S.A., which shut down in 2025.
Walt Disney’s chief executive officer, Josh D’Amaro, floated an Indiana Jones-themed replacement for that land two years earlier, back at D23 2024.
Ford broke the news in a pre-recorded video played for the crowd. “I’m the actual model of the Indiana Jones animatronic,” he said, adding that his “fear of snakes” made it into the likeness too. He closed by saying he was “coming to Walt Disney World soon.”
What awaits riders
Disney scanned Ford’s face and body to build the animatronic riders on the track. It’s the first time the company has used his actual likeness for an Indiana Jones attraction. Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure, started in 1995, features an Indy animatronic, but it was never modeled on Ford; Hollywood Studios’ 1989 Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular used a live performer instead.
Whether Ford will also voice the animatronic’s dialogue, or whether that falls to someone else, hasn’t been announced.
Some story details have surfaced too. Riders follow Indy into a cenote, then down into what the attraction calls the Maya Underworld, where a serpent creature named the Tsukán is waiting at the centre of it all. Disney says it worked with Maya archaeology and anthropology experts while developing the attraction.
None of that answers the bigger question, though. There’s still no opening date. Disney is only saying “soon.”
Still No Sixth Movie
One thing is clear: this isn’t a sixth movie. Ford first played the role in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” back in 1981 and returned as Jones for four more films, most recently in 2023’s “Dial of Destiny,” which was billed as his final Indy appearance. The five movies have brought in around $2.3 billion worldwide, with “Dial of Destiny” a commercial underperformer. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was asked earlier this year about reviving the franchise. She told Deadline she doesn’t think anybody’s currently interested in pursuing it.
So the whip and the hat aren’t retired. They’ve just moved off the screen and onto a theme park track, where Ford, for the first time, is quite literally part of the ride.
(Edited by Maryam Hassan)