Welcome to Jurassic Park

I recommend watching this video before continuing unless you're familiar with the structure of Jurassic Park: The Ride, since I'll be referencing its layout and details a lot through this review. 

Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Universal Studios Hollywood, I’ve forgotten how beautiful this ride is. The reveal of Jurassic Park towards the beginning as the doors open and the music builds is fantastic. I’m a sucker for reveals like those—seeing Sleeping Beauty Castle after walking under the tunnel and around the corner, witnessing space unfold before your eyes as you begin to climb the third and final lift hill of Space Mountain (after being teased with a small glimpse of it directly in your line of vision during the entirety of the second lift hill), sailing from a dark cavern into the midst of a pirate ship and the town engaging in battle on Pirates of the Caribbean. I love that stuff.

 I also greatly admire how perfectly this story works in a theme park setting. It was a pretty genius choice—literally placing a ride about a tourist park inside a tourist park. It’s a metaride inside a metapark. Thanks to this, everything feels purposely and natural—the boarding and disembarking of the boats, the lifts, the queue, the lines. It makes natural sense that all these elements would be in the world of the ride since in that world we are on a tourist attraction. There are very few attractions telling such a concrete story that give such obvious purpose behind these intrinsic features of an attraction, simply because of its perfect premise. Those that do are also framed as some type of tourist attraction—Indiana Jones Adventure comes to mind (we are all tourists on that ride as well—measuring our height, making sure our seat belts are fastened, waiting in line to board the jeeps, everything makes sense in the context of the story).

The three act structure here is really solid. I like that, unlike many other (particularly screen-based) Universal rides, it takes its time and doesn’t throw nonstop action at us, since you’re far more limited at what you can throw at the guests when you’re dealing with real spaces and animatronics. This doesn’t make attractions like the Forbidden Journey or Transformers necessarily bad or less sophisticated, but it’s refreshing. (Yes, Jurassic Park: The Ride was technically built before either of those rides, but Universal’s experimentation with 3D screens and new ride systems like the KUKA arm or the vehicles designed by Oceaneering International for Transformers/Spiderman are typically what the parks are praised and known for nowadays.) It shows why physical sets are so important and what Universal can do with them. The physical environment fosters a sense of exploration and believability that screens cannot.

The three act structure lets each section be very clear in tone and creates a crisp, strong story and experience for the attraction as a whole.

Act one—entering Jurassic Park and witnessing its beauty and grandeur. It begins as we board our boats, traveling up the first hill and gracefully floating out of the regular world and into Jurassic Park. The opening of the gates that welcome us into the land, the tropical plants, the majestic Ultrasaurus and the sweeping music. It gives us a taste of Jurassic Park’s wonder, embracing us into the world.

Act two—we pass through a cave that separates the second act from the first. Upon exiting this cave, see more quirky dinosaurs à la Jungle Cruise. I mean, try to tell me that this:

Photo via The Studio Tour

Does not remind you of this:

Photo via Dad’s Guide to WDW

This portion, along with letting us see a greater variety of dinosaurs and giggle at their antics (again, à la Jungle Cruise), reminds us that dinosaurs have their own personalities. The two little ones fighting over a popcorn box and the one spraying us with water remind us that they have a mind of their own. The ride slowly builds up to the fact that something may be wrong as we enter an unauthorized area—the electric fences, the static on our radio, the danger signs.  

However, despite the garbled but unmistakingly panicked feed we’re picking up on our radio, we can’t be sure how much danger we’re really in. We only know that we’re in an unauthorized area with no clue why the area is unauthorized. Is it just because the park staff wants to keep us on course? Or is there something more menacing about this area? The abandoned boat and floating Mickey Mouse ears suggest the latter.

Photo via In the Parks

This act ends with the car falling from the roof in front of our raft before we begin our ascent up another waterfall to the last act.

Act three—confirms the suspicions that we got in the last act. The inside portion of the ride is where we discover that ominous “something” the second act was builds up as we see the first appearance of the T-Rex. We are now certain that we are in danger and aren’t sure how it’s going to end as we float helplessly in the darkness to the sound of alarms and flashing lights.

Our entire perspective on the experience and the ride has changed. Much like the betrayal of the experiential story that we face on rides like Splash Mountain (go check out Pure Imagineering, great theme park analysis and essays), we were aware that there was a drop and were perhaps enticed by the promise of dangerous dinosaurs (the park’s logo is a T-Rex, for goodness’ sake), but we were swept away by the beauty of the Jurassic setting and now that we are actually in danger, we are fearful and perhaps somewhat regretful. Because of the way we were introduced to the dinosaurs and seen their interactions, they have become real to us to some degree. We may have originally feared nothing, thinking that it’s just a theme park ride, that the dinosaurs are nothing more than rubber and metal and wires. But we have allowed our disbelief to be suspended, we are, on some level, part of this world.

Everything building up to the second, full appearance of the T-Rex and, of course, the drop, delivering the original premise and threat of the attraction. It’s a strong structure that tells a really good story, each act supporting the other to create a memorable, well designed experience.

Photo via The Hettema Group

Photo via Wikipedia

However, I would slightly rearrange these acts. In my personal opinion, a few modifications to the narrative structure and time we spend in specific environments could make a big difference to the ride experience, particularly regarding the effectiveness of the three act structure and the ability to suspend our disbelief. Here is my proposal:

Act one—in the current iteration, we enter Jurassic Park and, boom, there’s dinosaurs right away.

Unknown source

Well, isn’t that what you expect from a Jurassic Park ride? Yes. And that’s why you don’t want to show them right away. Good theme park attractions don’t reveal everything at once. The master example of this is Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean where we are promised pirates, yet have to wait for their appearance. For more reading, I highly recommend the essay Fire in the Night: Pre-Eminent Attractions-as-Art from Passport to Dreams Old & New (incredible essays to be found there). We first wander through a New Orleans bayou, a dark corridor, underground caves with waterfalls, coves with pirate skeletons, and another ride dark cavern (ignoring the Davy Jones mist screen) until we finally see real pirates—six minutes into the attraction. 

First, it makes the payoff so much more rewarding. Like I mentioned above, coming out of the dark cavern and seeing the Wicked Wench is one of my favorite examples of a good theme park reveal. We’ve been teased with the remains of pirates with no traces of living pirates in sight and thematic elements that seem to have no connection to pirates whatsoever, but now we finally are given what we are promised. Second, all the time building up to that reveal allows us to suspend our disbelief and really drift into this surreal dream world as we sail further and further away from the loading station. When the pirates appear, we have an easier time believing them. The time is critical to letting the guest enter into the world. Animatronic pirates are obviously not genuine swashbucklers and take a good amount of investment from the audience to become real. And by giving the guest various scenes filled with more real, physical elements leading up to the animatronics pirates—waterfalls, caverns, skeletons, gold piles—the suspension of disbelief becomes a little easier since we’re easing our way into the attraction’s world without being asked to buy into its core immediately. Haunted Mansion is another good example of this—it promises us ghosts, but we don’t actually see the haunts until the grand ballroom scene. Instead, we see traces of them interacting with the mansion (floating candelabras, shadowy hands passing over grandfather clocks, phantom door knockers moving on their own) and other supernatural phenomenon (the séance room, the raven) before they materialize.

This isn’t true for Jurassic Park. We’re given the dinosaurs immediately, a concept harder to buy into than pirates. Sure, there’s a gate that creates both a physical and mental divide between the outside world and Jurassic Park, but that’s not enough. There’s also no real payoff (besides, perhaps, rewarding us for waiting in line, but the simple state of finally being on the ride is payoff enough for the wait).

Ideally, the first act wouldn’t have any dinosaurs. We must wait a minute before seeing the prehistoric beasts to acclimate ourselves to this new world. The tropical plants, rock formations, river, and waterfalls that surround us are obviously real, though their beauty is from another world. This environment could ease us into the world of Jurrasic Park, giving us time to immerse ourselves in the environment and suspend our disbelief so we’re more integrated into the setting by the time we see the dinosaurs. It would be an opportunity to appreciate the beauty of the park on its own merits, something we weren’t expecting to be treated with or even knew we wanted. But the mist from the waterfalls, the lush foliage, the colorful flowers, all set to the beautiful score move us. It’s these unexpected moments that really take an attraction to the next level. Moments we may not fully remember compared to the appearance of the T-Rex at the attraction’s climax, but that fundamentally alter our experience of the ride on a subconscious level. 

This unexpected appreciation of the park’s beautiful and tranquil side would make the “betrayal” in three act structure stronger. Initially attracted by the idea of dangerous dinos, we’ve realized that there’s so much more to Jurassic Park, we’re most invested in the reality of the world, and thus more anxious and frightened by the threat of the third act. The only narration in this portion would be “welcome to Jurassic Park” as the gates open, giving the guest a chance absorb things and willingly integrate themselves into the world rather than having it pushed upon them.

Act two—this is where we would see the dinosaurs, a good several minutes into the attraction, making the appearance more rewarding and exciting, as well as feeling more natural as we have had time to enter into this new world. This portion would essentially remain the same as the current attraction, but with the addition of the dinosaurs in the current first act to really make this segment “Jungle Cruise but with dinosaurs,” which can essentially be broken up into three scenes—the majestic dinosaurs from the current first act, the quirky dinosaurs with minds of their own, and the entry into the restricted area that prepares us for entry into the third act. This is where all the narration would be, minus to the solitary line of the first act.

Act three—unchanged, but strengthened by the rearrangement of the first two acts.

This is small complaint and the ride is still a beautiful attraction that knows what it’s doing. These additions would also add about 2-3 minutes onto the ride and I’m not sure that there’s feasible space to do that in Hollywood or other parks where the ride exists (which, excluding the rapid rides, all have the same basic narrative structure, with some minor differences in the details of each act). Besides, the ride already cost almost double the money to make than the movie itself ($110 million versus $60 million). However, it’s the small things like this in the narrative structure that can make the difference between a good ride and a great ride, and a great ride and a masterpiece.

However, Jurassic Park: The Ride is still breathtaking and still an indisputable classic that does so much right. The opening of its gates and reveal of its tropical landscape is one of my new favorite moments in theme park design. I hope to return to Universal Studios Hollywood to experience it in person again soon.

Photo via Wikipedia

Photo credits listed below pictures.  If you know the artist of the second to last photo under the last gif, please contact me so I can credit them. Gifs made on gifsoup from linked video.