JURASSIC PARK: THE RIDE – Inside Universal’s Extinct River Ride and Its Epic Evolution

Is Jurassic World coming to Florida?

When news of Hollywood’s blockbuster “upgrade” came down the line, some amusement park fans were quick to insist that it was only a matter of time before its not-so-distant sister attraction – the Jurassic Park River Adventure at Islands of Adventure – would receive the same makeover.

It’s not an absurd proposition. When Disney or Universal goes to the trouble of researching and developing a new version or overlay of an attraction, it only makes sense to roll it out as widely as possible (even if, for example, Soarin’ Around the World makes little sense in California Adventure, or a Princess and the Frog overlay of Splash Mountain doesn’t sit as neatly in Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland as in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square).

So naturally, Orlando’s ride would quickly go under the knife as well, covering yellows and reds with blues and whites, adding the trendy Indominus rex and Blue the velociraptor alongside Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, right? Well… For a few logistical reasons and a few conceptual ones, the idea of bringing Jurassic World to Islands of Adventure isn’t as cut as dry and some hope (and others fear).

After all, Orlando’s Jurassic Park River Adventure doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s one piece of an entire Jurassic Park land. So whatever capital expenditure Universal poured in Hollywood’s ride, Florida’s might cost double if it were to include the (for our sanity’s sake, let’s call “necessary”) aesthetic overlays elsewhere. While it would be easy enough to swap the logo over the land’s entry arch, more would be needed to actually, propertly convert Jurassic Park to Jurassic World, including – for example – replacing or reskinning the Jurassic Park Discovery Center that’s not only central to the land, but a theoretical icon of the park, viewed from across the Great Sea as a sort of weenie in the distance.

Sure, for the right price, Universal Creative could replace the ’90s Discovery Center with the more modern, glass Samsung Innovation Center… But would it carry the same weight? Is it as recognizable? As iconic? Or for that matter, will it be in a decade? Two? Three? And that, frankly, is the conceptual hurdle for a full Jurassic World takeover in Orlando…

Islands of Adventure’s strength – and indeed, the very thing that makes its lineup so much more steady than any other Universal Park on Earth – is that its contents are timeless. In Islands of Adventure, designers bucked the Universal trend and intentionally avoided flavor-of-the-week film franchises. No Minions. No Transformers. No Fast and Furious.

Islands of Adventure is – by any account – the kind of theme park neither Disney nor Universal will ever build again: a park centered not on “hot” IPs or current hit films, but on the novels, picture books, comics, legends, and stories that permeate pop culture and are passed between generations. This is a park built on a more evergreen foundation, based on the IPs that have been elevated beyond Hollywood hts; the characters that have become embedded in our cultural narrative. It’s not meant to be a park of movies, but of stories.

While Jurassic World is a hot franchise of fun big screen summer romps that have earned big bucks at the box office, is it timeless? Does it stand among Marvel’s comic book heroes, Dr. Seuss, and Harry Potter as a cross-generational classic? Wouldn’t the loss of the Jurassic Park “base” in favor of complete dedication to a fun-but-fleeting sequel series be a strange focus for the land in, say, 2050? Outside of the aberation of Islands of Adventure, playing “the long game” is pretty infamously not Universal’s strength, so maybe they don’t care nearly as much as we give them credit for. In which case, Jurassic Park – and indeed, many other Islands – might go the way of hotter, current IP franchises soon.

Park ‘n’ World

Universal’s choice for what to do with Jurassic Park at Islands of Adventure is – so far – to try to milk the best of both worlds from the island. In 2019, Universal finally upgraded its makeshift velociraptor meet-and-greet (once merely a temporary tie-in and promotion for the new films) into a full-fledged, from-scratch attraction in its own right.

2020’s new Raptor Encounter with its custom paddock doesn’t just feature the blue color scheme of Jurassic World; it features Blue the raptor herself – an explicit Jurassic World experience… inside Jurassic Park. It’s the kind of thing most guests hardly notice, much less care about. For those who do, you might manage to conceptually juggle the idea by imagining that in this Jurassic Park, the updated Jurassic World branding overlaps with Hammond’s park of old. Art imitates life, after all!

The waters got muddier when, in September 2020, Universal finally fessed up about a practically-completed coaster set to debut in the land in summer 2021: the Jurassic World VelociCoaster. No doubt starring Blue with at-least-pre-show appearances by Chris Pratt, the new thrill ride doesn’t just bear the Jurassic World name, but it’s straight from the Jurassic World ethos: a bare steel Intamin coaster tearing through the skyline, screeching through the jungles of the park – something you’d expect of Owen Grady’s commercial thrill park, not John Hammond’s boutique zoo.

Oddly enough, the multi-launch Jurassic World VelociCoaster will even wrap around the Jurassic Park Discovery Center! As you’d expect, discussion boards and social media are alight with commentary on the visual intrusion: both how it wrecks the park’s signature view and the “living land” formula of Jurassic Park itself, and how it’s entirely allowable given that the real Jurassic World would indeed have steel coasters in its skyline (even if, we might argue, Jurassic Park probably wouldn’t – and technically, this is still Jurassic Park we’re talking about…)

Is it the beginning of a gradual evolution in Islands of Adventure’s dinosaur-themed land? Or will the two brands simply coexist in a cross-timeline island for the foreseeable future? Will the park’s existing Jurassic Park River Adventure get the full Jurassic World overlay? Just a few of its key scenes? No changes at all? Even now, much is unknown about the extent of Jurassic World’s permeation in Orlando, and it’s likely that post-pandemic, even Universal Creative itself doesn’t know what the future has in store for this mixed up land or the River Adventure inside it.

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.