FANTASTIC WORLDS: A Land-by-Land Tour of Park Lore’s Blue Sky, Built-Out, Armchair Imagineered Disney Park

We’ll break with our circumnavigational tour of Fantastic Worlds for just a moment, skipping the park’s seventh land and jumping right to its eighth and finale – the land that neighbors Hallow Vale to the west.

Lost Coast

Pitch

Dateline, 1937: The well-to-do of the European smart set are wearing khaki this season, and the new vacation hotspot is the Lost Coast, an ancient and uncharted river temple complex recently discovered by archaeologist Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones.

Heeding the siren song of 1930s black and white newsreels, the nouveau riche of the Western World have descended here, on this archipelago of archaeology; a territory of temples; a province of pitfalls; a bastion of booby traps! Even as rumors of ancient curses, lost tourists, and unknown dangers mount, do you dare venture into this unseen world, where eyes are always watching…?

Inspiration & Concept

I think my daydreaming of an Indiana Jones themed land at an “Islands”-style Disney IP park predates Disney owning Lucasfilm at all. That rests entirely on the shoulders of the Lost Legend: Indiana Jones Adventure – Temple of the Forbidden Eye, which is certainly my favorite Disney Parks attraction, and that I wager is objectively among the best, too. To me, Indiana Jones is so synonymous with Indian temples, that I was actually shocked to finally watch the movies and find that three of the four aren’t set in Indian temples at all!

Indiana Jones is a property so ripe for exploration in a theme park that it’s really no surprise that somewhere in the multiverse, Disneyland has an entire Indiana Jones land. With that being said, Lost Coast is clearly not drawn directly from a film, and it isn’t exclusively themed to Indiana Jones. Instead, like the mythologies of Indy and the Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. and S.E.A., it all kind of blurs into an adventurous jungle port and various genre rides that sort of weave between mythologies. (Indeed, that’s what the never-built Indy land at Disneyland would’ve been, what with the Jungle Cruise and Railroad passing through it!)

So in this land, excuse my inconsistencies, blurred timelines, and mis-mashed IPs. Taking a page from Walt’s own Adventureland (where the Nile and the Amazon flow into each other, and where Tiki birds and hippos can coexist), this is a narratively messy – but hopefully, thrills-rich – world that I would very, very much like to visit…

Experience

Whether you enter Lost Coast from Hallow Vale or our yet-undiscovered eigth land, you find yourself in the midst of civilization. That’s on purpose. In the original Disneyland, each of Walt’s lands had a “Main Street” of its own – that path branching off from the hub. Frontierland, Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland each contained nice little entry avenues imagining towns of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy. Adventureland’s “Main Street” was different: on one side, civilization; on the other, the vast, dark unknown.

Just as in DisneySea’s Lost River Delta, I wanted to evolve that idea. So as guests enter, they find themselves amidst the modern-built world of explorers – the outposts built by the various exploration companies that have laid claim here, from S.E.A. to the Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. to Sallah’s Tours. There’s money to be made in drawing the nouveau riche of Europe with promises of harrowing dangers and ancient treasures… never mind that once they arrive, it all ends up being exposed as a ramshackle outpost of tin roofs and tourist traps.

Arriving from Hallow Vale, guests pass under the lifted wing of a seaplane – propellor sputtering – that’s skidded well past the runway, its burned rubber tire tracks still visible and its other wing dipped into the Sea of Stars. Ahead and right along the runway lies an enormous, tin-roofed airplane hangar housing SOARIN’: LEGENDARY JOURNEYS. (Fun fact: “Disney’s Legendary Journeys” was one of my ideas for the name of the whole park.) I have always wanted a Soarin’ that gave us what Tokyo’s version promised: a stunning tour of the wonders of the world. Lost Coast felt like the right place for it!

Set down in a low jungle grove, I added TEMPLE TWISTER, a simple family coaster (the same model as the Flight of the Hippogriff) around a few crumbling remains of temple towers. (This image above is of Paris’ Temple of Peril, but I’m truly picturing an off-the-shelf, compact Vekoma family coaster – it’s important that Lost Coast adds to the park’s family capacity despite its more “thrilling” source material and its “high thrill” headliners.)

Appearing rusted and aged as if built from scrap metal (with notes from Indy’s pal Sallah throughout the queue suggesting where new track supports might be needed or where riders have been hitting their heads), the coaster would race around the ruins of a temple, diving through roots and skimming across the surface of a misty spring.

The LOST RIVER CANTEEN would be the land’s quick service eatery, while JOCK LINDSEY’S HANGAR BAR (above) would offer a waterfront hangout with views across the Sea. Nearby, the HANGAR STAGE would be a performance venue for the land that could house anything from a story-based Indiana Jones themed stunt show to a more ethereal cirque-style production like Tokyo’s “Mystic Rhythms.” (I tired to incorporate stages in each land and in inconspicuous ways where if they’re not programmed on a given day, they wouldn’t scream “empty, unprogrammed stage.”)

From there, several bridges would cross out of the “settled” territory and into the unknown… the place where ancient adventures truly await.

Unsurprisingly, I placed INDIANA JONES ADVENTURE: TEMPLE OF THE FORBIDDEN EYE as the land’s clear anchor. I make no apologies! Yes, it would be nice if this version of the ride could benefit from improvements financed for Tokyo’s version (like Japan’s scenic concrete where California’s ride devolves into blacklight cut-outs, or the stunning “smoke ring” scene replacing Disneyland’s infamous rats)…

But I have to tell you, you can. not. beat. the mythology of Mara in my mind. The legend of the three Gifts of Mara… the constant warnings not to look into the god’s cursed eyes… the three doors in the Chamber of Destiny, each leading to a “unique” Hall of Promise… Mara’s deep voice booming “Foolish mortals! You looked into my eyes…” as his visage rusts and cracks… It’s just the best story, and I wouldn’t even pretend that I could come up with a more compelling plot device than Mara.

So yes, unapologietically, I copy and paste Temple of the Forbidden Eye into the land built around its context.

Along the main river separating the encampment from the unknown, I placed JUNGLE CRUISE: LOST EXPEDITION. This is definitely my plan for a “new age” Jungle Cruise, merging the mythologies of the land with its signature heart and humor. While I worry that overloading Jungle Cruise with a “story” weakens the experience, I kind of think some MacGuffin to serve as a goal or a treasure might be alright, sort of highlighting the ride’s iconic gags, then refocusing on a “lite mission.”

To that end, I included what I think would be a fun surprise… After touring through the jungle, the boat would enter an ancient temple where it would activate a secret switch or geyser, lifting the boat up to a second level. That would lead into a brief “dark ride” scene before the boats are sent sliding down a drop, splashing into a volcanic grotto and diverting into the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. (An idea drawn from that never-built Disneyland expansion… and c’mon, wouldn’t a Jungle Cruise boat sailing through Indiana Jones Adventure’s lava pit be cool? Kind of like the PeopleMover offering a preview of Space Mountain!)

I included the JUNGLE NAVIGATION CO. LTD. SKIPPER TRAINING CHALLENGE TRAILS – a version of Shanghai Disneyland’s incredible high ropes course, which offers three different trails that travel around different aspects of the camp, into hidden caverns, behind waterfalls, and more. These trails would all be built around the land’s sort of central, iconic sight: a mountain with a seaplane precariously dangling in its roaring waterfall. The torrents of falling water would keep the plane’s propellers spinning as it hangs face down over the Challenge Trails below.

That mountain would actually be built to conceal the tall showbuilding for TOMB RAIDER: TIMEFALL. Again, I have no regrets about this blatant IP invasion, because if you follow me on Twitter or know anything about my theme park obsessions, you may know that I’ll never love a ride quite like I loved the Lost Legend – TOMB RAIDER: The Ride.

There is absolutely no explanation for why a regional, seasonal park in Ohio – (then-Paramount’s) Kings Island – managed to build such an incredible, $20 million, unprecedented dark ride / thrill ride hybrid that would still feel like a headliner if it were built, unchanged, at Universal Orlando today… And though the chances of that happening are – for many reasons, quite literally – zero, TOMB RAIDER: The Ride will be a part of my Armchair Imagineering projects until the day I die.

Famously, TOMB RAIDER was so mysterious and so hard to describe that first-timers didn’t know what kind of ride it was even once they were seated and strapped in. In short, TOMB RAIDER was a Giant Top Spin – a 77-person, 80-foot tall variant of the flipping, nauseating Top Spin you’ll find at traveling fairs. But man is it so much more. In pursuit of the ancient Triangle of Light (said to control the flow of time itself), guests would awaken the ancient goddess Durga, who would send riders hurtling upward toward icy stalactites, swinging through massive inversions, and dangling over lava pits in a disorienting, diving, flipping thrill ride.

Try as I might, I can’t even let myself “re-theme” it as an Indiana Jones ride for the sake of the land’s continuity. The score for TOMB RAIDER: The Ride – perfectly synchronized to the attraction’s every move – is just too incredible. Too nostalgic. No edits, no changes, 10/10, and they can add a little plaque in memorium of me at the exit when I die. Everything the Scarlet Witch did for her children, I’d do to find a universe where TOMB RAIDER: The Ride still exists.

So in my Fantastic Worlds, it does. (The name change is just because “colon-The-Ride” is an infamous no-no at Imagineering, and I owe it to Fantastic Worlds’ guests to highlight the word “Fall” lest we run into an Alien Encounter, with parents underestimating the unseen ride’s intensity.

So, hopefully that gives you a peek into the penultimate land in my Fantastic Worlds. As for the final land? It’s something we haven’t seen before, but an animated world I’d love to step into…