Disney Named the Animal Kingdom Indiana Jones Ride Myth of the Jade Serpent, and Harrison Ford Is the Face Model for Its Animatronic

Disney spent Saturday night at D23 filling in the biggest blank in its Animal Kingdom expansion. The Indiana Jones attraction coming to Tropical Americas finally has a name, Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent, and it will carry something no Indiana Jones ride has carried before: Harrison Ford's actual face.

Ford appeared in a recorded message during Horizons: A Carousel of Progress, the Disney Experiences showcase, to say he is serving as the model for the attraction's Audio-Animatronics figure. Disney says it is the first time Ford's face will be the one guests see on the character at any of its parks. Imagineers Michael Hundgen and Chris Beatty returned to the news later in the presentation and showed the digital model being used to build the figure.

That claim is the part worth pausing on. Disneyland has run Indiana Jones Adventure since 1995 and Tokyo DisneySea has run its own version since 2001, both with Indy figures inside them. Disney's specific wording at D23, that this is the first time Ford will be the face you see on a Disney attraction anywhere in the world, quietly puts those earlier figures in a different category. Putting a living actor's likeness on a theme park animatronic is a rights question as much as an engineering one, and Disney chose to lead with the answer.

Quick facts: Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent opens in 2027 in Tropical Americas, the 11-acre land replacing DinoLand U.S.A. at Disney's Animal Kingdom. It takes the site of DINOSAUR, which closed permanently on February 1, 2026. The story is set in the 1950s. Disney has not announced an opening month, a height requirement or a ride system.

The story Disney described

Guests meet Dr. Jones at a temple ruin beside a cenote, the limestone sinkhole that Maya communities treated as a passage to the world below. In the ride's telling, that passage leads to the Maya Underworld and is guarded by a serpentine creature called the Tsukán. Riders are pulled through a portal into the Underworld and have to get back out past bats, oversized scorpions, fire and, inevitably, snakes.

The Tsukán, pictured at the top of this story in the concept art Disney released, is the reason to care about this one. Beatty said guests meet it repeatedly across the ride, building to a final confrontation, and Disney showed a first look at an Audio-Animatronics figure large enough to dwarf the Imagineers standing beside it. The team is sculpting it by hand.

Disney also said the project has been developed with archaeologists, anthropologists and Maya cultural experts, and that Imagineers took research trips to Copán in Honduras, one of the best preserved cities of the ancient Maya. That is a real commitment for a theme park attraction, and it is the kind of claim that gets examined closely once a ride actually opens.

What Disney did not say

A great deal. Disney gave 2027 and nothing narrower, so there is still no opening month to build a trip around. It did not describe the ride system at all, which matters because this attraction takes over DINOSAUR's show building rather than starting from bare ground. It did not give a height requirement, which is the single most useful number for a family working out whether the ride suits their group. And while Ford is lending his face, Disney did not say whether he recorded new dialogue for the attraction.

Our own reporting in July found a permit that pushed the Indiana Jones attraction's timeline into summer 2027. Nothing Disney said on Saturday contradicts that. Nothing narrowed it either.

The rest of Tropical Americas

The Indiana Jones ride is one of two headliners in the land. The other is the Encanto attraction, which Disney detailed separately at the same showcase. Around them, Tropical Americas gets El Carrusel de los Animalitos, a carousel spinning 22 hand-carved animals drawn from Disney and Pixar films, among them Scuttle, Squirt, Pua, Pascal, Simba, Eeyore, Kuzco and Heimlich, plus a Maya-inspired play area where children dig for artifacts.

Source: Disney Parks Blog.