Timberly leads the crowd down a hallway, past the spot where that raptor’s incessant scratching and screeching against the exterior wall is targeted. Giving it a quiet dismissal, she leads us onward to a great steel door. She makes a show of hiding the keypad with with an “Ope!” as she types in a numerical code, with a glowing blue light signaling the door’s opening. After establishing the need for silence, guests are led into a circular, darkened meeting room, with screens around the circumference offering sponsorship opportunities and new potential attractions available for naming rights.
But today, our attention is in the room’s center, where seats have been arranged in concentric circles staggered across three tiers, all gazing inward at the egg in question… and with InGen-approved safety harnesses to ensure no one disrupts the delicate hatching process. As guests are seated, the lights lower and from a podium, Timberly begins the process of ultrasonic vibrations meant to hasten the hatching… “Sorry folks,” she laughs annoying as the pitch rings in our ears via binaural sound. But as she finds the right pitch, our seats rumble deeply…
After a tense moment, the central egg cracks and out emerges a sweet, gray velociraptor pup, blinking against the harsh spotlights. It slowly and adorably breaks away the remnants of shell holding it in, then, with an inhale, squeaks out its first ever chittering barks. The scientist turns on an amplifier, allowing its newborn chatter to echo through the room… so much so that the baby is startled by its own sound, sweetly falling backwards in surprise. It’s a heart wrenching moment as the miniature animatronic purrs and squeaks, sneezing mist into the dusty air of the auditorium… but then… in the distance, its call earns a response…
As if hearing the hatchling’s breathless squeaks, the frenzied raptor whose enclosure we passed outside becomes audible again, even though layers of steel doors. Both we and the newborn raptor sit in strained silence as claws tear, muffled, against steel. Our comedic in-room scientist assures us that nothing could possibly go wrong. After all, the “sick” raptor’s enclosure is electrified. With perfect timing, the building’s lights flicker out.
“Okay, she cut the power,” our host chuckles uneasily, as emergency lights hum to life and automated announcements to evacuate begin. “Oh, wonderful. Evacuate… And you’re stuck in your harnesses…” she speaks, wide-eyed into the darkness. Her “JP Service” returns as she smiles, unseen. “No worries folks! That door we walked through to end the room? Mkay? That’s solid steel. The Indominus rex couldn’t get through that.”
As red perimeter lights undulate, the screens pop to life with grainy, real time security footage of the raptor in the hallway outside, sniffing the air… it approaches the door into this very room as we see it curiously eye the numeric keypad. “Oh please,” our host laughs, “raptors aren’t intelligent enough to use the keypad. We’re perfectly safe.”
With a swipe of its claw, the keypad is shredded. The dinosaur recoils from the sparks… just as the door we entered through slides open, revealing the real, in-the-flesh creature in silhouette. As sparks fall from the door, it steps cautiously inside, its claws scraping against the corridor. And then, as its baby chirps, the adult velociraptor rears back to leap and the theater is plunged into darkness…
We’ll leave it there, but suffice it to say that the dinosaur’s rampage becomes a multi-sensory experience as it stomps through the room, sniffs guests, drools on their shoulders as it purrs in their ear, and contends with Timberly’s increasingly outrageous antics to save herself – even if it means abandoning us altogether.
Alright, alright, so it’s a blatant play on Disney’s own Lost Legend: Alien Encounter… But Universal loves a nod and elbow at Disney Imagineering, and given the cult classic status of the Tomorrowland original, it stands to reason that a Jurassic Park set spin-off might be just the kind of thrill ride Universal loves.
If you love “armchair Imagineering,” check out how I incorporated this Raptor Encounter attraction in a full Blue Sky Build-Out of Islands of Adventure!