Jurassic World: The Ride

It’s not just that Jurassic World: The Ride absorbed the more modern, sleek, white and blue coloring of the newest film trilogy; the experience on board is entirely unique. A few of the noteworthy changes you’ll spot along the banks of the new Hollywood attraction?

• The opening scene (the John Williams score, trellis, and Jurassic Park wooden gates) have been replaced with new music, narration, and visuals indicating guests arrival at the tank of the mosasaurus;

• The Ultrasaur Lagoon scene has been entirely enclosed, with parallax screens simulating glass walls looking out into the tank of the aquatic mosasaurus. A rare appearance of screens in the ride, the scene is exceedingly well-done and contains a surprise or two.
• The falling Jeep has been removed and replaced with the mangled bars of the Indominus rex’s enclosure, with bloodied claw marks and dead pterodactyls across the river indicating its escape… an eerie (but unfortunately static and lifeless) new scene.

• Monitors placed along the course connect “live” to Bryce Dallas Howard’s “Claire” and Chris Pratt’s “Owen” as they direct riders on what to do.
• The interior of the Environmental Systems Building has lost its “industrial” appearance and instead was redesigned as the “T. rex Kingdom” exhibit, with false rockwork and plants giving the impression of a curated habitat guests are meant to visit.
• The initial attacking T. rex animatronic (the gnashing head) has become the I. rex.

• Blue, the famous Velociraptor from Jurassic World, makes an appearance in animatronic form before the finale
• The I. rex appears as an animatronic just before the drop, (eventually) battling with the T. rex (which remains in its position behind a waterfall over the drop).

Take a ride through the magnificent Jurassic World: The Ride here. It’s not a matter of figuring out what’s changed from Jurassic Park; it’s more about trying to find something that’s stayed the same!

Is Jurassic World: The Ride better than its predecessor? We’ll leave that up to you to decide. We can confidently say that the newest iteration of Universal’s prehistoric water ride certainly features its fair share of “wow” moments and much-improved pacing in spots,  but it seemingly splits the difference by undermining some of the greatest moments of the original in stretches of inactivity or passive scenery.

Which brings us to the question everyone’s wondering…

Is Jurassic World coming to Florida?

Truthfully, we just can’t say whether or not Jurassic World is coming to Universal’s Islands of Adventure. On one hand, the land is inherently tied to the original film franchise by way of recreating its Discovery Center, for example. And by the way, to that end, Jurassic Park is probably, objectively a better fit for Islands of Adventure and its literary backstories than World would be; if you squint, you can imagine that the land is themed to Michael Crichton’s novel simply using the film for some visual inspiration here and there.

A lot probably depends on a change that is coming to the Jurassic Park land at Universal Orlando: a new (and still-officially-unannounced) roller coaster is taking shape along the park’s central lagoon, twisting in the jungles formerly home to the Triceratops Encounter and diving along the water’s edge in front of the Discovery Center. The very concept of such a high-speed, overtly thrilling, bare steel roller coaster taking root on Isla Nublar inherently feels more World than Park, doesn’t it? Even its allegedly-leaked name - Velocicoaster - feels like the modern, 21st century, in-your-face name you’d expect of Owen Grady’s version of the park rather than John Hammond’s, right?

Perhaps the ultimate direction of Islands of Adventure’s Jurassic Park will be more clear once the land’s new roller coaster is official - and it may be as easy as seeing if it’s yellow or blue! However, even if the coaster (and its rumored velociraptor show scene) do hint at or even explicitly feature Jurassic World characters like Owen Grady or Blue, we still expect it to simply be a cross-contaminated, mish-mashed contradiction rather than a signal that the entire land is going the way of the World franchise.

For now, it appears that - for better or worse - Jurassic Park is here to stay at Universal’s Islands of Adventure… Even if most fans would probably be happy to swap a few of Jurassic World: The Ride’s best scenes into Orlando’s 20-year old River Adventure ride... 

Lost Legend

And that brings us back to that long-gone Hollywood original, Jurassic Park: The Ride. Perhaps the pinnacle of Universal’s “creature feature” era, this Californian classic was twice imitated, but never duplicated. The original ride did the unthinkable: submerging Audio-Animatronics in water beneath Californian sun, sending guests on a tranquil cruise-turned-nightmare, and somehow creating a new adventure that feels as if it could’ve existed just off-screen in the real Jurassic Park. 

Its reimagining as Jurassic World: The Ride certainly introduced new twists and turns to the attraction’s tried-and-true course, but ultimately we’d argue that it’s simply different, not better. After all, how can you beat the soaring John Williams score as those wooden gates part? The industrial mayhem of the Environmental System Building and that imposing countdown; the T. rex appearing from behind a waterfall?

So while the Jurassic Park River Adventure continues to cruise through custom-built lands at both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Japan, we’ll always feel that the Hollywood original was a step above, and deserves to be an exalted entry in our Lost Legends series.