Universal Orlando 2012 by Seth Kubersky

Author:Seth Kubersky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, technical article, tutorial, Epub, IDPF, ebook
Publisher: The Intrepid Traveler
Published: 2011-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

JURASSIC PARK

If you’ve seen the movie Jurassic Park, you will recognize the arches that greet you as you enter. If you haven’t, you should make sure to rent the original film from your local video store before coming. Knowing the film will help you understand a lot of the little details of Jurassic Park, including the frequent references to velociraptors.

Here, Universal’s design wizards have re-created the theme park that the movie’s John Hammond was trying to create before all prehistoric heck broke loose, and the lush and steamy jungle landscape they have devised fits in perfectly with Florida’s humid summers.

As in the movie, we are asked to believe that we are in a park containing actual living dinosaurs, some of which are quite dangerous. Periodically, roars are heard, and more than one child has been seen starting in terror when an unseen critter growled in the underbrush. Unfortunately, the surprisingly realistic atmosphere has been somewhat disrupted by the boy wizard’s arrival. It’s understandably difficult to hide a huge honking castle, but it would be nice if they’d at least give its backside a coat of “go-away green” in the future.

Discovery Center

Rating: * * +

Type: Interactive displays

Time: Unlimited

Short Take: Best for young dinosaur buffs

This is lifted almost straight from the film and houses a fast food restaurant, a shop and, on the ground floor, a children’s “science center,” which blends fantasy and reality in such a way that you might have to explain the difference to your more trusting kids. Kids will certainly recognize the huge T-Rex skeleton that perches menacingly on a rock outcropping and pokes its head through to the circular railing on the upper level.

A nursery carefully incubates dinosaur eggs. Nearby, kids can handle “real” dino eggs and put them in a scanner to view the developing embryo inside. Periodically an attendant appears and conducts a deadpan scientific show-and-tell as you watch an adorable baby raptor emerge from its shell.

Closer to reality is an actual segment of rock face from the North Sea area containing real fossilized dinosaur bits from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous eras. A series of clever “neutrino data scanners” let kids move along the rock face looking for dinosaurs. When a fragment is found, the scanner analyzes it and then identifies and reconstructs the dinosaur from which it came. In somewhat the same vein is an exhibit of life-sized dinosaurs that supposedly lets you see the world as the dinosaurs saw it by looking through high-tech viewfinders mounted periscope-style into the model dinosaurs’ heads and necks and moving the creatures’ heads around (unfortunately, it rarely seems to work properly).

On the zany side is a DNA sequencing exhibit that explains the cloning premise on which the movie is based and then lets you combine your own DNA with that of a dinosaur to create a saurian you. And completely over the top (but a lot of fun) is a quiz show with the rather naughty name, “You Bet Jurassic.” Here you and two other tourists compete in a game of dinosaur trivia.

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