What Indiana Jones Can Teach Us About Designing Meaningful Experiences

Two weeks ago, after Disney announced Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent at D23, I wrote about the Maya tradition behind Tsukán and the connections among the serpent, Chaac, cenotes, water, and the larger themes of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Since then, Disney and several people connected with the project have shared more about the thinking behind the attraction. Those details have shifted my interest from the mythology itself toward another question: how does a team take that kind of research and turn it into an experience people can actually enter?

Joe Rohde recently offered a small example that says a great deal about the process. While looking at the model of the Temple of Chaac at D23, he noticed that most people were photographing it from above. He knelt down instead, viewing the temple from the height and perspective guests will have when they eventually approach it. From there, the façade revealed the face-like composition of a Witz, a living or animate mountain, with a great open mouth incorporated into the architecture.

Rohde was looking at the design through the eyes of the person who would experience it. He was considering what guests would see as they approached, what the building would communicate before they entered, and how architecture itself could help prepare them for the journey ahead. For educators, that way of thinking opens some interesting possibilities because we are also designing experiences for other people, whether we are planning a lesson, creating a classroom, developing a program, or imagining an entire school.

Indiana Jones has been part of my own educational work for many years. Through Adventures in Learning with Indiana Jones, I have used Indy’s adventures as openings into history, archaeology, mythology, geography, and culture. I also spent years teaching Maya history and culture as part of an Ancient History course, so I have enjoyed seeing two subjects I have cared about for a long time come together in this attraction. What interests me most now, though, is what the process behind it can teach us about designing learning experiences.

Research Gives Depth to Design

Everything Disney has shared about Tropical Americas points to a significant investment in research. Imagineers traveled through regions that inspired the new land, studied architecture and archaeological sites, examined materials and artistic traditions, and spent time with people whose expertise could deepen their understanding. At Copán in Honduras, for example, the team worked with Maya artists, studied architectural details, and explored the materials and techniques used to create them.

The Temple of Chaac has also been informed by specialists with deep knowledge of Maya history, archaeology, art, and culture. Indigenous Maya archaeologist Dr. Ivan Batun has been involved with the project, and archaeologist George J. Bey III worked on the design of the temple itself. Disney’s team has drawn upon cultural knowledge, archaeology, art, architecture, storytelling, engineering, and themed design as the experience has developed.

The lesson for schools is broader than the particulars of this attraction. The quality of an experience grows with the depth of understanding behind it. When teachers know a subject deeply, they have more choices for how students might encounter it. When school designers understand the community, the learners, the curriculum, and the purpose of a space, they can make decisions that connect with one another instead of simply filling rooms with furniture and technology.

There is also an important lesson in the teamwork itself. Experiences of this complexity come from people who bring different forms of expertise and different ways of seeing the same problem. One person notices something another may overlook, while knowledge from one discipline may strengthen an idea that began somewhere else.

Schools benefit from the same kind of collaboration. Teachers understand students, curriculum, and instruction. Architects and designers bring expertise in space. Technology and facilities teams understand how systems and buildings function. Counselors and support staff see dimensions of student life that may be less visible in a classroom, while families and community members understand the people and place the school serves. Bringing those perspectives together can produce something far richer than any one person could develop alone.

Let the Space Help Tell the Story

The research behind the Temple of Chaac becomes especially interesting when we see how it has been translated into the environment.

Rohde has confirmed that the temple is dedicated to Chaac, the Maya deity associated with rain, water, storms, and fertility. The murals Disney has revealed include imagery of water, plants, animals, supernatural figures, and maize, a crop central to Maya agriculture, culture, and belief. Those ideas are embedded in the surroundings guests will move through as the adventure unfolds.

Rohde described the attraction as containing “ecological messages encoded in the designs.” I like the idea of information being encoded into a place because it suggests that an environment can help people develop understanding through what they notice. Guests may enter with no knowledge of Maya iconography and still recognize recurring images of water, crops, animals, and people. Someone may begin wondering why maize appears so prominently or why certain animals are represented. A person who already knows something about Maya culture may see additional layers.

The environment gives people something to notice and something to wonder about.

Schools can do the same. A learning space can communicate what happens there before a teacher begins speaking. The objects displayed, the work students see, the way materials are organized, the images on the walls, the arrangement of furniture, and the opportunities for interaction all help establish expectations about learning. A science classroom should offer clues that investigation happens there. A history room can surround students with evidence of other places and times. A makerspace can make experimentation visible before anyone begins a project.

The goal is deeper than decoration. The environment can become another part of the learning experience when the choices within it grow from the ideas we hope students will explore.

Every Doorway Can Become a Portal

The Witz provides an especially powerful example.

In Maya art and architecture, mountains could be represented as animate supernatural forms. Disney’s Temple of Chaac incorporates that idea through the face-like composition of the façade and the enormous opening near its upper portion, framed by what appear to be teeth. The temple reads as a living mountain whose mouth becomes an entrance into its interior.

For the ancient Maya, mountains and caves held important connections with water, fertility, sustenance, and the sacred world beneath the earth. Within Disney’s attraction, entering the mouth of the Witz eventually leads guests toward the Maya Underworld. The act of walking into the temple therefore becomes part of the story. Guests cross a threshold and enter another realm.

That offers one of the strongest connections I see between the attraction and education.

Every classroom doorway is an opportunity to cross into another world.

A history classroom can become an entrance into another civilization or time. A science room can open onto worlds too small, distant, or complex to encounter through ordinary experience. An art room can invite students to see differently, while mathematics can reveal patterns and relationships that surround us every day. The main entrance of a school can also establish the tone of the larger community students are joining.

Thinking about a doorway as a threshold changes some of the questions we might ask. What does a student encounter on the way into a room? What expectation does the entrance create? Does the transition offer some indication of the ideas, questions, or experiences waiting inside?

Schools do not need monumental temples for entrances to have meaning. A change in imagery, objects, sound, lighting, student work, or even the way a teacher welcomes students can signal that they are crossing into a different kind of experience. The opportunity comes from thinking intentionally about the transition.

People Make the Experience

A beautifully designed doorway and a richly detailed classroom can only take us so far because someone still has to lead the experience.

That is where Indiana Jones becomes particularly interesting for Imagineering Education. We usually think of him as the archaeologist deciphering inscriptions, exploring ancient places, and pursuing mysteries, but he is also Dr. Henry Jones Jr. In this attraction, the person guiding guests through the adventure is literally a teacher.

There is an appealing educational parallel in that role. An engaging teacher invites students into territory they do not yet understand and gives them reasons to explore it. The teacher knows more of the landscape at the beginning, but the experience becomes powerful when students begin noticing patterns, making connections, asking questions, and discovering ideas for themselves.

Indiana Jones has always made knowledge feel like something worth pursuing. Archaeology leads to mysteries, clues lead toward other questions, and each discovery gives the journey another direction. That quality is one reason I have used the character educationally for so many years. Curiosity becomes part of the adventure.

The teacher, however, represents only one part of the people who shape a school experience, just as Indiana Jones will represent only one part of the human experience surrounding this attraction. Disney Cast Members will welcome guests, guide them through the space, manage transitions, answer questions, solve problems, and help create the atmosphere around the adventure. Those interactions will influence how people experience everything the Imagineers have built.

Schools have their own network of people who play similar supporting roles. Counselors, librarians, paraprofessionals, office staff, custodians, food-service employees, technology specialists, nurses, coaches, aides, and many others contribute to a student’s experience throughout the day. They help shape whether a school feels welcoming, supportive, organized, and human.

Behind both of those visible groups are the people who created the environment in the first place. The attraction exists because teams of researchers, designers, artists, engineers, craftspeople, builders, technicians, and many others worked together over years to imagine and construct it. Schools also emerge from the work of teams whose decisions influence how students eventually experience the place.

This is where the fourth pillar of Imagineering Education, people, becomes especially expansive. People envision the experience, build it, support it, guide others through it, and ultimately experience it themselves. Story, space, and experience depend upon people working together to bring them to life.

Story, Space, Experience, and People

Seen through those four pillars, Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent becomes a useful case study for education.

The story creates a reason to enter the adventure and provides meaning for what happens along the way. The space gives that story physical form through the Temple of Chaac, the Witz, the murals, and the imagery surrounding the guest. The experience allows people to cross the threshold and participate rather than simply observe. The people research, design, build, support, and guide the entire journey.

Those elements reinforce one another. Research helps the story and environment gain depth. The environment provides opportunities for discovery. The people guiding the experience help others recognize connections and remain curious enough to continue exploring.

Rohde captured the result when he wrote, “After all, an Indiana Jones attraction can go into any park, but this Indiana Jones attraction belongs at Animal Kingdom.” In my previous article, I explored why the mythology and ecological themes make that connection work. What interests me here is how the team arrived at an experience that feels so closely connected to its place through careful research, collaboration, storytelling, environmental design, and attention to the people who will eventually encounter it.

Schools can ask many of the same questions. What story are we inviting students into? How can the environment support it? What experiences will help students engage with the ideas for themselves? Who needs to be part of designing and supporting those experiences?

Looking Through the Learner’s Eyes

When Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent opens, most guests will probably drawn to the attraction because they want an adventure. Along the way, some may become curious about Tsukán, Chaac, Maya architecture, cenotes, maize, or the strange mouth above the temple entrance. Others may simply experience the story and discover later that some detail they saw was connected with a much larger cultural idea.

Education works with that same possibility. We cannot predict every connection a student will make or which question will send them in an unexpected direction, but we can design experiences that give curiosity room to develop. We can create places with depth, provide meaningful stories and questions, invite different forms of expertise into the process, and make sure students have people around them who are prepared to guide and support the journey.

Rohde kneeling beside the Temple of Chaac model provides a simple image for how that work can begin. He changed his point of view so he could see what the guest would see. Educators and school designers can do the same by considering how a student encounters a school from the moment they arrive, how they experience the transition into a classroom, what they notice once inside, how the learning unfolds around them, and how the people they meet help shape their understanding of the place.

Every classroom doorway is an opportunity to cross into another world. Designing what happens on the other side begins by seeing that world through the eyes of the learner.