Here is a new Disneyland Paris update with some amazing news about DLP Adventureland Temple of Peril as Joe Schott "DLP Directeur General Adjoint" revealed in a meeting with DLP fans that Indiana Jones Temple of Peril will be destroyed and rebuilt entirely all in REAL STONE, and the looping track, too, will be rebuilt!
I know that it's hard to believe and personally i couldn't believe it - just like you, i presume - so i double checked to make sure that it was not an April Fool at the end of September and, yes, this is really what Joe Schott said, they are really going to rebuild the temple in real "stone" like in the good old times when Pharaohs were building the Pyramids!
Works should start next year and last five months. I don't think they will rebuild the coaster structure itself as, as you can see on the great aerial picture below coming from my DLP book, the temple itself has been built around or inside the coaster structure, so they probably can rebuild the temple without touching to the coaster structure. The only thing that remain to be confirmed is if they are really going to rebuild the WHOLE temple or only a part of it? I know that all this sounds insane but no need to say that considering the financial situation of DLP if they decide to rebuild the whole temple it's not for the pleasure to spend money and there is probably a good reason behind all this.
So, i tried to learn a bit more about how the temple was built 20 years ago, in 1993, and although there is certainly a steel framework and concrete substructure to support the whole thing, it seems that a big part of the temple is in fact made of block of foams covered by cement - sculpted cement of course, or eventually sculpted concrete. One of the reasons they did it like this in 1993 seems to be because of the small budget which was available. No need to say that if the temple is really made in foam + cement it's no surprise that they need to rebuilt it twenty years later. May be they realised that the way it was built is not strong enough anymore, becoming potentially dangerous, and may be they don't have any other way to resolve the problem than to rebuild the whole thing... Well, may be they shouldn't have called it "the Temple of Peril"! Bad omen!
That said, if they rebuild the temple, may be it would be a good idea to improve the ride at the same time. There is quite a lot of ideas that were envisioned during the design at WDI and some of them included great additional decors, specially this one showing the train entering inside the head of a giant asian statue...
...or also this one showing a never built arch...
...not to mention this idea of the train entering a gorilla mouth.
And if they re-build the loop - i mean: this loop...
...may be it's the right time to remember these others concepts of a loop with the track going under and over a giant gorilla statue...
...and what about this other idea with the ride vehicle going through the mouth of a stone eagle?
But one of the easiest element to add could be this audio-animatronic tiger - coming right from the “Jungle Cruise”... It surely would be a great addition, and this one probably not so expensive. But for weather reasons it might be difficult to have this AA Tiger in open air. Also, they might think that due to the speed of the train during the ride guests won't have the time to see and enjoy the tiger. I have the solution: there is one part of the ride where they could put it, and it's at the very end when the train slow down before the arrival. What they should do is to build there a ten meters tunnel in which they'll put on the right the tiger in a small niche ( like on the artwork below ) and it'll be a great finale for the ride, at low cost as the Jungle Cruise Audio-Animatronic has very limited movements and is probably not very expensive. And they should put at the start of the tunnel the giant asian statue head, the one you can see on the first rendering above.
...as well as those audio-animatronics baby tigers which were envisioned to be part of the pre-show decor.
Editing: I just remind that these two tigers scenes were not in fact part of the original WDI story for the Temple of Peril. Those tigers scenes were done when it was announced that Esso was going to be a possible sponsor of the attraction and WDI was brainstorming to introduce scenes linked with Esso - remember the famous Esso tiger? Finally, with no budget available for the Audio-Animatronics tigers DLP Imagineers suggested logos on stuff and oil drums instead. That said, sponsor or not sponsor, if the Imagineers thought it was possible to introduce these tigers scenes without damaging the original story they could as well do it now... as long of course as the park give them the budget to do so.
DLP won't probably introduce any of these exciting ideas for budget reasons - the same reasons than twenty years ago - but what they could do more easily is to add the same fire and water effects that they did at Tokyo Disney Sea's Raging Spirits temple, which is basically an improved Temple of Peril.
Don't go away, there is a "one more thing", as Joe Schott also revealed that after the rebuild of the Temple of Peril it will be the turn of Big Thunder Mountain! No kidding. But for this Frontierland favorite the plan is not to rebuild BTM but only to increase the ride capacity. How they will do it is another question that we will talk about later. By the way, some of you might think that all these new announcements from DLP might be done in reaction to the fans petition sent recently to Bob Iger, but in fact i've been told that these projects are part of a long term strategy scheduled since 2009. That said, may be there is a link between the petition and the fact that they communicate about all this now. Anyway, even if i'm sure you would have prefer the announcement of a brand new ride, the fact that one of the park's favorite coaster will receive improvements in a near future is a great news, and of course i will let you know when works will start on the Temple of Peril.
Also, as i announced last week, now that the english collector's edition of the Disneyland Paris book is almost out of stock, we are reprinting the english edition in its normal edition, and it should be a very good news for those of you who still don't own the book but couldn't afford the 120€ price of the collector's edition. All the inside of the book will be similar with always 320 pages and the same 750 pictures including 250 WDI artworks, this time printed on a luxury "silk art matte" paper. You can place right now the pre-orders and enjoy a special pre-order price of 55€ ( + 15€ shipping worldwide ). Shipping is expected at the end of November when we will receive the books from the printer. As usual you can pay with Paypal or bank transfer and please send us an email to confirm your order at: neverlandeditions@gmail.com
For more infos about this reprinting please jump HERE, and you can also watch the video below showing the whole book.
NOTE for the french édition: Si le bouton Paypal ci-dessous ne fonctionne pas lorsque vous choisissez l'édition française merci d'envoyer le montant directement le montant depuis votre compte Paypal à: neverlandeditions@gmail.com
Pictures: copyright Disney, Daniel Rous, Altitude
