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A baby raptor may be adorable, but can still be deadly. Universal Studios Hollywood brought out one of its dinosaurs from the all-new extended Jurassic World — The Ride area to walk the red carpet during the grand opening celebration of the attraction on Monday night.
Little Tango is adorable and her handler, Chris Page, said she’s a playful girl and will let you keep all of your fingers if you approach her right. The rules are not to move too quickly and never, under any circumstance, try to reach down to Tango from above.
“So far, we’ve trained her so that people are be able to get close without her nipping at them,” he said. “So we do a training exercise where when fingers are at front when she notices, if she likes you, she gives you a little nudge and then you’ll pet her right under the chin and she likes that.”
For a moment you forget it’s just a puppet being controlled by Page and not an actual living, breathing creature that blinks its eyes, growls and purrs and gives little nudges with its head. It all feels very magical. The theme park also introduced Juliet, a lovable Triceratops that just wanted to eat the surrounding foliage while the celebration was going on. She’s a huge dinosaur that responds well to her trainer, doing subtle tricks while roaming about.
Of course, the park has increased the visibility of Blue, the lead dinosaur in the “Jurassic World” films, which is trained by actor Chris Pratt’s character Owen Grady. Blue is a female Velociraptor. She’s smart, quick and most certainly deadly if not properly trained. There’s no need to worry, the theme park assures, as their handlers are highly trained and these animals won’t attack guests.
However, we all saw the movies, we know things go terribly wrong in each one. Jon Corfino, Universal creative project director and show producer, said he’s not too worried about things going awry.
“Having these dinosaurs, I think, it’s actually one of the more important elements of all of this,” he said. “We ride a ride and we see the magic and do all that stuff, but when you get out there and see the engagement one on one, that’s pretty magical and I think it’s terrific.”
“Jurassic World” producer Frank Miller said the interaction with the new dinosaurs is just showing a new generation the magic and real life history of dinosaurs.
“This update is really for a new generation and the movie did that too,” he said. “You come off the ride and you see people seeing dinosaurs for the first time, touching them and it makes it all that much more real. One of the things we tried to do is show that it is authentic. Dinosaurs were really here so we do have a blueprint to work off of so to be able to bring them to life again for people, that is special.”
Aside from the roaming dinosaurs, the expanded Jurassic World–The Ride area also has an all-new Dino Play area where kids can learn about excavation, look at a number of tools used for archaeological and paleontological digs and discover a variety of dinosaurs.
“That was really my request,” “Jurassic World” director Colin Trevorrow said. “As we’re expanding our products and the merchandise is expanding, one of the things we’re doing is a whole S.T.E.M. program of products that focus on paleontology. More dinosaurs are being discovered now than ever before because of all those kids who saw ‘Jurassic Park’ and grew up to become paleontologists. I’m more passionate about that than anything.”
The Jurassic Outfitters shop located just outside of the ride, also carries a variety of educational toys, figurines and collectible memorabilia from the “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic World” films. There are limited-edition Lego sets, sculpted dinosaur busts and fossil sculptures to go along with pretty much any item you can think of that can be branded big and bold with the “Jurassic World” logo.
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