Jurassic Park Visitors Center

The Visitors Center is a fictional building at the hub of Jurassic Park, featured in the novel and 1993 film of the same name. The center is located at the zoo-like amusement park set up by billionaire John Hammond (founder of InGen) on the island of Isla Nublar (near Costa Rica). It is themed around dinosaurs and the center is the main hive of activity for guests visiting the park.

In the novel, it is called the "Visitor Center", omitting the "s".
Exterior

The exterior of the building is made of gray limestone and follows an unusual concave curve. The lower front section, which has flowing water ducts and decorative foliage on either side, follows a convex curve and is split in half by the stairs, which lead up to the main entrance door. To the left there is a wheel chair accessible route. On the door is the design of an egg with sun rays spawning from it on its surface. Around the door are fake engraved dinosaur fossils for effect. Six tall black tinted windows, three on either side, span the building along with plants. The top of the building has 3 thatched tiki-hut styled roofs with a larger one in the center to house the main entrance hall. The top also has guard rails, apparently for use as some kind of observation deck. The Visitor Center is inseparable from the tour as the main vehicle garage is located in the basement. The tour cars exit the visitor center via the left side arm from the alcove. Lush rainforest trees surround the area along with an observation pond and a field off to the far left.

Either arm extends out and would have double doors that would lead to the alcoves visible from the outside. On the left side--opposite the rexs entrance area--the alcove serves as a road from which the tour cars and other vehicles exit the garage. The double doors seen inside during the film would lead to a hallway bringing you down into the basement of the Visitor Center.

The opposite side--the one in which the rex enters--is not used as an exit for tour vehicles and most likely was meant as an employee only exit, but was never completed.

Briefly during the reboot sequence, a schematic of the VC can be seen. This, however, is not entirely accurate. It would seem that the blue prints input in the computer were not the most up to date and are lacking in several key facilities.

In The Novel
In the novel, the building is described as being a tall, mainly glass, rotunda with a black metal frame. The movie version, on the other hand, has a more tropical/colonial theme. Neither building is complete, with construction work still taking place although the film's is meant to be less complete than the book.

Most descriptions here are based on the film Visitor Center and should not be confused with the book version.

Interior

Inside is the main entrance hall, leading off to different parts of the building. There's a staircase leading to the balcony walk way and above that are glass windows bringing light into the hall. The middle of the hall shows two museum quality dinosaur skeletons replicas, one a Tyrannosaurus rex and the other an Alamosaurus, suspended by cables in a fighting pose. Once again the hall is made of limestone with wood edges and the floor is laid with black marble. At the rear of the room is a long illuminated wall length painting of dinosaurs in their natural habitat. The rear also leads to the restaurant and gift shop. A banner hangs across the hall with the words, "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth".

Again the interior was still under construction.

The main mural seen in the background, blown up and printed onto transparent windows, was actually three 8 1/2 by 11 foot paintings painted by the famous naturalist painter Doug Henderson, depicting life in the Jurassic period. The ones on either sides of the doors (one is a Gallimimus, the other a group of Brachiosaurus) are two of the paintings while the other is the main center mural.

The black and white mural in the dinning area behind the buffet is actually a painting that is based off of Picaso's 'Guernica.' In this case, instead of people, Dinosaurs are in their places.

Showcase Theater
The first attraction is the Showcase Theater. Here, Mr. DNA, a cartoon character based off a strand of DNA, walks visitors through the makings of Jurassic Park, showing a small video on what it takes to make a dinosaur and gliding past the lab and security center so visitors may see the real workings of Jurassic Park. Lap bars come down and the theater moves on along a track to show visitors the inner workings of the park. Narrated, the tour passes by the laboratory where the dinosaurs are re-created and then moves onto the office/control center heading the park. After this, one's journey through Jurassic Park would begin. One would exit the showcase theater and get into one's tour car for a ride of a lifetime.

V.I.P. Dining Room
There is a dining room featured in the film that appears to be reserved for V.I.P. visitors. The room is small and is painted black. Screens line the walls and projectors continuously show various information about the park's creation, types of dinosaurs, and fiscal projections.

Meeting Rooms
Equipped to serve all functions, the Visitor's Center is also equipped with several meeting rooms available for conferences and business meetings. Never featured in the film, it is believed that these rooms would be designed similarly to the V. I. P. dining area.

Cretaceous Café
The restaurant is rather large and the long glass length painting of dinosaurs is carried through into this room. The tables have chairs made of bamboo and there are candles on each table. The theme is a buffet. Food is placed on the tables along the black and white mural nearest the kitchen and people serve themselves. A buffet table with cake and ice cream was on offer in the film. Fans line the ceiling, plants are scattered around and a big kitchen is featured to the rear.

There is also an outdoor dining area, equipped with tables, chairs, and umbrellas. Foliage permeates the area and adds to the ambiance. This area can be visible through the glass windows.

Gallimimus Gift Shop
The gift shop leads off the restaurant but is rarely featured. The shop stocks normal merchandise and apparel such as t-shirts, lunch boxes and mugs, books, posters, toys, and stuffed animals, all themed with Jurassic Park logos and colors.

Embryo Storage
This room is off-limits to visitors. The room stores dinosaur embryos in a deep-freeze state in specially made tanks.

Damage

During the dinosaur breakout, the building incurred extensive damage. The main hall was nearly destroyed when Velociraptors entered the building and climbed onto the skeleton formation, buckling them and bringing them crashing to the ground. All the skeletons were destroyed. A T. rex also caused damage in the hall. The theater window suffered several bullet holes by Dr. Alan Grant while he shot at the Velociraptors trying to burst through into the control room, which was covered by glass as the Velociraptor broke through and consequently shattered the window.

Michael Crichton's original novel stated that the entire park was destroyed by bombing, but in the second movie the Visitors' Center appears to have been abandoned and left derelict. In a deleted scene from The Lost World (viewable on the DVD or in the TV version of the film) of a boardroom scene in which the past and future of InGen is discussed, it is mentioned that Isla Nublar has been dismantled and at great cost. Even in film continuity, Isla Nublar is no longer inhabited and has been cleared out or abandoned by InGen (hence, InGen sought to remove dinosaurs from Site B).

Production locations

*Exterior: Valley House Plantation Estate, Kealia, Kauai, Hawaii.
*Interior: Universal Studios Hollywood, CA.
**Visitor center lobby and rotunda: stage 12.
**Visitor center kitchen: stage 24.
**Visitor center control room, theatre, and dinosaur hatchery: Stage 28.
**V.I.P. dining room and visitors' dining room: unknown stage at Universal Studios, Hollywood, CA.

Jurassic Park: San Diego
Featured in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: San Diego, California is another fictional attraction and visitors' center that was under construction in 1990, abandoned, and then construction began again in 1997. This park was built before the Jurassic Park: Isla Nublar was ever made. Hammond abandoned it in favor of the island setting when his dream grew to a much grander scale. The park was later a second attempt to put dinosaurs on showcase for the whole world, but this time at a more commercial location. The team, led by Peter Ludlow (Hammond's nephew in film continuity; unrelated to Hammond in the novel), went to Isla Sorna, the breeding ground for the Jurassic Park dinosaurs to bring the now wild dinosaurs back to San Diego to create the attraction. The story of the film is centered mainly around this plan.

The attraction is rarely featured, but what is seen is an aerial shot of the complex, as well as several artists' impressions and a model. The attraction is a more compact version of the original park, conical in shape, modeled after an extinct volcano. This is headed by a replica of the main gate featured in the first film, with the "Jurassic Park" title engraved into it.

There are several pens surrounding the complex and many attractions both within and without the amphitheater. The first floor has a main dinning area and shop, while the other floors house several other unknown facilities, reportedly the same amenities as the first Visitors' Center, but these aren't shown. Unfortunately, the attraction never made it past construction stages due to the incident seen in the film: namely, the T. rex escape and rampage through San Diego.

Real-life Jurassic Park Visitors Center
Universal Orlando Resort's Islands of Adventure theme park in Florida has the Jurassic Park Discovery Center, a real-life version of the Visitors Center from the film. The center is modeled after the film's center, but is quite different.

The outside of the center has, instead of windows like in the film, a 3D mural embedded in the wall of Jurassic scenery. Inside, a large mural extends across the front wall containing several dinosaur species in a realistic artist impression of a Jurassic period forest, ocean, and field. Visitors who enter the front of the center and enter the main rotunda will see several skeletal mock-ups of Tyrannosaurus rex, Apatosaurus, and a Pteranodon. The "Center" connects to a Jurassic-Park themed playground, and houses a dining area and a gift-shop on the second floor.

The main floor contains several facilities meant to entertain and teach. There is a wall in which fossils are buried; running the viewer mechanism over the wall shows one what fossils are from where and from what species they originated. This area also houses several child-oriented, dinosaur-shaped kiosks where children can press buttons and hear dinosaur calls. Next, there is a "Mr. DNA" attraction (although Mr. DNA is a CGI character, rather than a cartoon in the films) where one's DNA is seemingly infused with that of prehistoric DNA, creating a human/dinosaur hybrid which is shown via the screens; one merely places one's face over a 3D mesh of one's choice (based upon the answers to a short questionnaire), creating the effect (at the end, however, the DNA mixture becomes too unstable and is "abandoned").

Next to that is the main hatchery: One can view the "scientists" at work filling out forms and examining "eggs" (actually animatronically-rigged models), or one can examine "eggs" with the help of several devices which use many scanning techniques to examine the egg and allow one to guess what sort of "dinosaur" is housed in the egg. A short description of the animal is then given, followed by the location on the island. Randomly throughout the day (at least once per hour), one can view a dinosaur hatching: a pre-emptive warning is given over the intercom that a "hatching" is about to begin and one of the "technicians" comes over and guides one through the hatching. The Velociraptor "hatchling" handled by an actor playing a paleo-biologist is then given a name by the children present. The Velociraptor is, of course, a complex animatronic model, similar to the actual hatchling animatronics used during the filming of the movies. There are no show times, and catching a hatching baby dinosaur is purely based upon luck.

The next facility is a sort of gameshow-styled alcove where contestants test their dinosaur knowledge against that of other guests. Lastly, there are three fullscale but 1940-esque dinosaur animatronic figures. Here, children can look through a device behind the dinosaur and move its head.

Scientists constantly roam the halls, and the areas outside of the Discovery Center with assortments of gadgets, and at a random times on select days, a scientist in a green jacket brings out a baby Triceratops named Savannah. The trike's movements are lifelike and it responds to being touched, but touching the face can result in it snapping at or even biting one. It also makes gurgling noises and cries.

External links and references
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*[http://maps.google.com/maps?qhttp://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number273172&tk&om1 Google Maps satellite photo of Jurassic Park Visitors Center exterior set, Universal Studios Hollywood]

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