Jurassic World opens quietly but makes a big splash with new technology
LOS ANGELES — When Universal Studios Hollywood closed its aging Jurassic Park ride in September for an overhaul, the park’s research and development team wanted to inject the same bigadrenaline scares and state-of-theart magic seen in its latest blockbuster dinosaur movies.
But the team also had to rush to finish the ride in time for this year’s peak summer tourist season.
Jurassic World — The Ride, as it’s officially called, opened earlier this month after several days of testing with almost no fanfare. The ride has been met with huge crowds, queues up to two hours long and mostly positive reviews from riders.
“This biggest challenge was to turn it around in a very short accelerated pace,” Thierry Coup, senior vice president of Universal Creative, the research and development team for Universal Parks and Resorts, said in an interview about his latest attraction.
To do that, Coup said, his team turned to some unique visual effects, the latest in animatronics and a few ideas borrowed from existing attractions such as the King Kong 360 3D segment of its Studios Tour.
“It’s still all about delivering a great experience,” he said.
Park officials declined to say how much they spent to overhaul the 23-year-old ride, which reopened less than two months after its biggest crosstown rival, Disneyland, launched its $1 billion expansion, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
Industry experts say theme parks try to open new attractions in late spring to take advantage of the surge in tourists when youngsters get out of school and families start summer vacation.
The Jurassic World attraction is a boat ride posing as a tour of a research facility where dinosaurs have been brought back to life thanks to amazing advances in science. But, like the earlier version, the ride turns haywire when the creatures escape and threaten to eat the visitors.
Early in the ride, passengers on the boat float past what looks like an aquarium that holds 3.5 million gallons of water and a 60-foot-long Mosasaurus (think of a cross between an alligator and a whale). The sea creature chomps down on a shark and then hungrily eyes the boat passengers before smashing into the aquarium glass, sending water splashing onto the monster’s intended victims.