Jurassic World makes a big splash with new technology
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 big-adrenaline scares and state-of-the-art 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 on July 22 ater 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, there search 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 ater its biggest crosstown rival, Disneyland, launched its $1 billion expansion, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
The Jurassic World attraction is still a boat ride posing asa tour of are search facility where dinosaurs
The Jurassic World attraction is still 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
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, passenger son 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.
The aquarium walls are actually eight massive high-definition screens _ four on each side of the boats _ and the Mosasaurus is made to look real thanks to proprietary Universal Studios technology that changes the images on the screens to reflect the perspective of the viewers in the passing boats.
The technology, known as squinching, creates a 3-D effect by making objects that are closer to viewers move faster across their field of vision than objects in the distance. The technique was first tried on the Amazing Adventures of Spider-man ride that opened at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure theme park in 1999 and later on Transformers: The Ride 3D, which opened at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2012, Coup said.