When Islands of Adventure opened some rides envisioned for the Jurassic Park land were unfortunately cancelled. One of them was the Jeep Safari ride which would have been great as you will see on the renderings below from artist and former WDI Imagineer Scott Scherman.
The first artwork above shows a concept for the jeep vehicle of the ride. The next one below shows the jeeps entering a Jurassic Park camp before they move inside the land where the AA dinosaurs are.
On the next artwork things are becoming serious as the jeeps would have gone right under a giant Brontosaur. These artworks are unfortunately in low-res but if you enlarge them you can see that others animals would have appear like a long Apatosaur neck, from the lagoon. Before moving under the Brontosaur the jeep would have enter the land through the famous Jurassic Park gates and moving under a kind of giant net where probably others effects or animals would have awaited the guests.
On this last artwork - which was not the last part of the ride - you can see clearly a jeep being attacked by what seems to be Velociraptors. The arrows on the drawing indicate for sure other kind of effects and i wish i could tell which one, if i only knew... What i know is that others renderings exist and that in another scene a T-Rex would have "stepped on" the guests jeep and spin it in a way similar to the scene in the movie!
Apparently this ride was planned for the area behind Thunder Falls and was scrapped for its similarity to the River Adventure raft ride. Universal obviously favored the water based ride but who knows, may be they will build it one day - let's hope so!
Artwork by Scott Scherman : copyright Universal Studios
I wonder if the netted area is maybe a "bird cage," as it's called in the world of Jurassic Park. A pteranodon, etc., aviary of some kind. Hmmmm Thank you for posting this, and for all the great posts in general. I've enjoyed your site for many years! Very inspiring and interesting.
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