Creating a Monster

A dilophosaurus stirs from its hiding place on the construction site for Jurassic Park--The Ride. A thin brown head pops up, reddish eyes peering.

Nearby, workers stop to watch. They know the small dinosaur is only a robot, a contraption of tubular steel and hoses that pump hydraulic fluid at 3,000 pounds per square inch. They know its hide is a plastic-based compound meant to stretch and wrinkle in all the right places, like living skin.

But the dilophosaurus moves with disarming smoothness. It stares back at onlookers and waggles its tongue.

And the workers smile as if watching a dog doing a trick in the backyard.

With a $110-million budget and Steven Spielberg as a consultant, Jurassic Park is this summer’s most-anticipated amusement park ride. Scheduled to open June 21 at Universal Studios Hollywood, its bright yellow boats will carry riders along a 5 1/2-minute course inhabited by more than a dozen computerized dinosaurs ranging from chicken-size compys to a stegosaurus the length of a school bus.

“We put a lot of sweat and craft into the physical movement of the dinosaurs,” Spielberg said. “In a theme park, it’s the naked eye that judges. You have to work hard to fool the naked eye.”

The creatures rustle through a jungle of ferns, palms and bamboo at the center of the hillside park. A river runs through the greenery, past lagoons and waterfalls, culminating in an 84-foot drop that is the tallest ever constructed for a water ride.

In Southern California, where amusement means big business, a hot attraction can lure millions more dollars to the gate. Universal is hoping for the kind of success that Disneyland enjoyed last summer when its Indiana Jones Adventure ride sparked record attendance.

“Those two parks drive each other,” said Tim O’Brien, an editor at Amusement Business magazine in Nashville. “You can expect Jurassic to be superb, if only because Universal wouldn’t dare open anything less after Indy Jones.”

The new attraction is six years in the making. It was hatched even before the Spielberg-directed film when Neil Engel, a creative director at the park, read Michael Crichton’s 1990 bestseller. He recalls thinking: “Wow, this book was meant to be a ride.”

But Engel and his designers faced a daunting challenge--the concept depended on lifelike robots.

“To borrow a pun, the parks have created their own monster by providing cutting-edge stuff every few years,” O’Brien said. “Now the public expects it.”

Spielberg, for one, was skeptical. Having scouted animatronics for his film, he found the available technology lacking. “Much too herky-jerky,” he said. “The biggest critics would be the kids. They know.”

After contacting engineers around the world, Universal’s designers heard about a complex hydraulic system being developed for the space shuttle. “Compliant reactivity” offered quicker, smoother movement by way of extremely high-pressure hydraulics.

At the same time, computerization could make the robotics appear more natural. When an arm extended, for instance, the shoulders, torso and legs would shift slightly to maintain balance, just as they would in a living creature.

While a Utah company worked to translate this technology to dinosaur-size skeletons, chemists began developing a flexible, durable skin. The robots had to be both functional and realistic.

“The science is incredibly fast-moving, and there’s still a lot of mystery,” said Don Lessem, co-founder of the Dinosaur Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes research and education. Lessem consulted on the attraction and the movie. “I gave them options for the way the dinosaurs might have behaved, the way they might have appeared and sounded.”

In 1993, with work progressing, the film came out. Powered by a convincing blend of robotics and computer animation, it would gross a record $1 billion in worldwide box office. Engel took his design team to see a preview.

“We sat there watching it, and we all said, ‘Oh, so that’s what Spielberg meant about looking super lifelike. Oh my God.’ ”

For the next two years, the designers tinkered with and tested robots that cost between $100,000 and $1.5 million each. Engelnormally relaxed and quick to laugh--recalled “dark hours of repeating, ‘I hope we can do this, I hope we can do this.’ ”

The first of the dinosaurs arrived in Southern California this winter. The knee-high compys were so jammed with hydraulics and electronics that they weighed 500 pounds. The Tyrannosaurus rex weighed 18 tons.

This expensive technology subsequently fell into the hands of a man who goes by the name Davey Crockett Feiten.

Feiten began arriving at the construction site each morning in a T-shirt and sunglasses, looking for some shade to place a small table on which he arranged a laptop computer, a larger central processing unit and a control panel. He was a Spielberg-type character--a boyish genius on whom much depended.

Said Spielberg: “Look at the very first Godzilla movie. Whoever was inside that zip-up suit did a heck of a job of scaring us. Our animals are only as good as the animators.”

Trained in cel animation, Feiten had learned to program robots at Disney, where he worked on “pirates and chickens and Lincoln, all the good stuff.” Like cartooning, animatronics employed such elements as exaggerated movement and keen timing.

So, just as Bugs Bunny rears back before speeding off, the dinosaurs were programmed to arch their necks before lunging forward. They were made to chew and roar and flick their tails, with every gesture amplified to read big. A single dinosaur required weeks to program.

“The only problem,” Feiten deadpanned, “is they won’t do anything unless you feed them raw fish.”

These days, as the animator fine-tunes his subjects, workers are putting the finishing touches on their new home. No detail has been overlooked, from intricately simulated fossils to rows of imported Canary Island date palms left shaggy to appear prehistoric. John Williams’ film score plays from hidden speakers.

Equal attention has been paid to story line. The ride’s premise is explained by Sir Richard Attenborough, who, reprising his role as entrepreneur John Hammond, appears on video screens just inside Jurassic Park’s familiar, towering gates.

Much has been learned since the previous, disastrous attempt at genetic manipulation on the fictional Isla Nublar, Hammond says. At this new park, the velociraptors and T. rexes are confined in back, in secure pens, for further research. Guests will view only docile herbivores.

The early going features a canopy of bougainvillea and a still green lagoon where a mother ultrasaurus cranes her 30-foot neck over passing boats to an offspring on the other side.

“That’s what Spielberg calls the ‘domestic tranquillity scenes,’ ” Engel said.

The tranquillity is shattered when a parasaurolophus bursts from the water, nudging the boat into a backstage area of Hammond’s park. Riders can see that the waterfall out front is a fake, fed by pumps, which they might have already suspected. They also see a raptor pen busted open.

With the line between truth and fiction blurred, the attraction careens through various plot twists on its way to a cavernous laboratory where T. rexes howl amid hissing steam and flashing red lights.

“Everything gets stark and industrial and ugly,” Engel said. “From beauty to horror.”

Which explains why Feiten has been spending so much time trying to get the dilophosaurus just right. The robot runs through its program over and over again, popping up from inside a stranded boat, causing welders and painters to pause from their work.

When Feiten is finished, special-effects artists will move in. They will drench the dinosaur’s teeth in fake blood. They will strew tattered clothing, shopping bags and cameras all around.

The adorable little guy will appear to be devouring a boatload of tourists.

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THE JURASSIC PARK RIDE

Universal Studios’ newest ride, scheduled to open June 21, features full-size and scientifically correct animatronic dinosaurs in a tropical setting with thousands of live plants. Visitors are guided through the park in 25-seat boats, which are pushed downstream by jets of water. The ride finished with the fastest, steepest water drop in amusement ride history.

Ride facts

Length of ride: 5.5 minutes

Ride vehicles: Sixteen 25-passenger free-floating boats

Time interval between each boat: 30 seconds

Riders per hour: 3,000

Minimum height to ride: 42 inches

When project development began: November 1990, more than three years before release of the film “Jurassic Park.”

While in line. . .

...visitors are led through a tropical arbor where they view a multimedia show on large video screens, hosted by John Hammond, owner and creator of Jurassic Park (played by Sir Richard Attenborough).

Danger lurks

The boat is pulled into a giant water duct, where terror awaits. Visitors exit the complex via an 84-foot drop in pitch darkness. 25-seat boats take visitors through the ride.

Bumpy ride

A dinosaur emerges from underwater and bumps the best off course. The Raptor pen is on the right, with visible gaps in its electric fence.

Ultrasaurus greeting

A mother and baby ultrasaurus greet visitors. Other dinosaurs await as the boat passes through a cave and exits at Stegosaurus Springs.

Lush landscaping

353 palm trees of 11 species, including sago, king, queen, kentia and Canary Island date.

926 additional trees of 33 species, including flame, golden rain, orchid, Australian tree fern and dragon.

7,441 shrubs, plants, and flowers of 76 species, including star jasmine, breath of heaven, Tasmanian tree fern and giant Burmese honeysuckle.

300 bamboo plants of six varieties.

Animatronics: Underneath their movable skin, the dinosaurs are engineered with hydraulic physics, mechanics ad space-age robotics. Their movements are triggered by a sensor, which detects the oncoming boat. A computer program written for each dinosaur controls the interior hydraulics, creating realistic and fluid movement.

Source: Universal Studios Hollywood