Specific Trivia Tropes:
- Author's Saving Throw: In February 2020, after the ride's closure for an extensive refurbishment to install the full Indominus animatronic, a spokesperson for Universal also claimed that more dinosaurs would be added.
Come the ride's reopening in April 2021, they indeed make good of their promise in Predator Cove. Namely replacing the Pterandon corpses with a smashed Gyrosphere and two Compsognathus animatronics fighting over a hat as well as putting an Indominus animatronic headnote peering through a smashed wall just before the boat begins to climb up to Tyrannosaurus Rex Kingdom. - First Appearance: The Stegosaurus and Compsognathus both made their first physical appearance in the franchise on this ride, a year before The Lost World: Jurassic Park came out.
- Inspiration for the Work: The idea of the attraction mostly comes from the boat ride that was depicted in the original Jurassic Park novel.
- Market-Based Title: The ride is referred to as Jurassic Park: The Ride at Hollywood and Japan.
- The Other Darrin: In Florida's version of the ride, Richard Kiley is replaced by an unknown actor as the ride's narrator.
- The Producer Thinks of Everything: The ride includes a sort of day care for children too small to ride. Since this day care is supposedly run by Jurassic Park, it's stocked with dinosaur toys and The Land Before Time movies.
- Promoted Fanboy: In Hollywood's retheme, voice actor Billy Kametz provided the voice of one of the workers speaking over the intercom as the boat enters the Mosasauraus tank, and passes through Predator Cove. In the same stream where he confirmed this, he notably mentions that he had previously worked for the park's Studio Tour and felt glad to have landed a voice role at a park he previously had worked at as an employee. This would be his second and final role at a theme park before his untimely passing in June 2022."You are cleared for entry."*
"We have a containment alert. We show multiple containment failures! Repeat: Multiple systems failing!"*
"Tracking multiple targets! We are in full containment failure!"* - Prop Recycling: When the Triceratops Discovery Trail was closed, some of its props were moved into the queue line of Florida's version.
- Role Reprise:
- Richard Attenborough reprises his role as John Hammond in the queue videos for Hollywood's version and again for Florida's version, the latter of which would be his final performance of the character.
- For Hollywood's version, Richard Kiley returns as the tour narrator from the first film. They spared no expense.
- Hollywood's retheme has Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return as Owen and Claire for the queue videos and ride proper over the intercom and such. B.D. Wong also returns as Dr. Henry Wu for the queue videos.
- Uncredited Role: Both iterations of the ride have several unknown actors playing people in the queue videos and over the intercom in certain parts of the ride, with the late Billy Kametz' involvement in Hollywood's retheme to be one of the only names identified as mentioned above.
- What Could Have Been:
- Storyboards reveal that the ride would've had a "false ending" scene, where once inside the main building, guests would find themselves going up a conveyor ramp and end up at a backstage unloading dock, where an operator (that would've been played by a live actor) would tell the guests that they will evacuate them out. Just before they would have a chance to release the lap bars, a Velociraptor would break through a chain-link fence and screech at the operator, causing them to fall down out of shock and accidentally hit the controls that would then send the riders falling backwards down the same conveyor ramp. The idea of a false unloading station scene would later be recycled into Orlando's version of Revenge of the Mummy.
- This did partially make it into the original ride actually. Just without the live operator and the going backwards part. Instead the vehicle is pulled up the while a speaker announces the audience will be unloaded and one could see an unloading station approaching but a raptor breaks in and scares whoever is on the speaker and the guests fall down a drop instead.
- Florida's version was originally going to have been built in the Universal Studios Florida park, where Men in Black: Alien Attack sits now. Concept art for it showed that it would have looked mostly similar to Hollywood's ride, but would have had a slightly expanded restaurant area and a mostly-outdoor final drop. Steven Spielberg came in and encouraged them to do something more elaborate for the franchise. The result was the fully-themed Jurassic Park area that now exists at Islands of Adventure.
- In Florida, there were originally plans to have a Jeep Safari ride and a Helicopter tour simulator accompany the River Adventure, but both were scrapped due to the park going over-budget.
- Additionally at Florida's version, there were initially plans to give the ride a slight makeover just for Halloween Horror Nights XII (2002), which would've involved making the ride near-pitch black, altering the lighting in some scenes, and possibly adding props of mutated dinosaurs and other forms of gore.
- Duplicates of Singapore's Rapids Adventure version of the ride were planned for Universal Studios Dubai and South Korea, but the plans died out along with the parks themselves.
- Early concept art◊ reveals that a section of the ride was going to include a large aviary wherein riders would encounter and presumably be menaced by animatronic Pteranodons. This was ultimately scrapped, though the Pteranodons would later serve as the theme for roller coaster at both Florida and Japan's Jurassic Park areas. As of 2018, the Pteranodons are set to be included in the Universal Studios Hollywood refurbished version, due to their increased relevance in Jurassic World.
- One concept for the Jurassic World refurbishment was much more ambitious, featuring two Indominus animatronics, the use of a screen to bring Nothosaurus into the lineup, an animatronic Metracanthosaurus, and a giant animatronic mosasaur.
- The Jurassic World refurbishment originally was going to have one last screen with Claire and Owen in place of the extra Dilophosaurus following the final drop. This was removed before the ride opened for unknown reasons.
- Storyboards reveal that the ride would've had a "false ending" scene, where once inside the main building, guests would find themselves going up a conveyor ramp and end up at a backstage unloading dock, where an operator (that would've been played by a live actor) would tell the guests that they will evacuate them out. Just before they would have a chance to release the lap bars, a Velociraptor would break through a chain-link fence and screech at the operator, causing them to fall down out of shock and accidentally hit the controls that would then send the riders falling backwards down the same conveyor ramp. The idea of a false unloading station scene would later be recycled into Orlando's version of Revenge of the Mummy.
General Trivia:
- According to this making of documentary and a few other sources, Steven Spielberg is allowed off the ride just before the drop occurs, as he apparently has a fear of heights.
- The original Hollywood version of the attraction was built on a budget of $110 million, about $50 million more than the budget for the first film.
- Development on the attraction began in 1992, before the movie even came out. Concept art of it can be seen in the film itself, on the screens in the background of the dinner scene.
