Jurassic Park Franchise's 6 Dinosaur Theme Parks & Resorts Explained
Throughout the Jurassic Park franchise, there have been a number of dinosaur-themed resorts and theme parks at various stages of development. Every location paints a picture of what Jurassic Park’s success could’ve looked like if John Hammond had succeeded or its failure if Ian Malcolm turned out to be right again. Regardless, whether a sister location or a successor, Jurassic Park represented more than a singular place, but rather, the greater ambitions of a man who tried to create something wondrous.
In the Jurassic Park movies and novels, John Hammond spearheaded an enterprise to clone extinct animals for the modern era. Using dinosaur DNA found in fossilized amber, Hammond’s research company, InGen, managed to recreate prehistoric life, which they planned to make into the ultimate tourist attraction. However, as one of the biggest and ground-breaking prospects in human history, it proved to be a Sisyphean undertaking as InGen’s staff attempted to understand their animals, technology, and audiences. Although it seemed every time, because of negligence, pride, and ignorance, InGen’s Mesozoic menagerie managed to find a way to create unimaginable chaos.
John Hammond had bigger plans and different strategies to display his dinosaurs to the world. Hammond's plans for Jurassic Park naturally changed as his ideas expanded. Outside of Isla Nublar, there were other proposals to expand the original resort, and they all have a unique place surrounding the series’ canon. Regardless, Isla Nublar was neither the beginning nor end of Hammond’s vision for a dinosaur zoo and only added to the tragedy of everything he lost. Here are all the dinosaur parks in the Jurassic Park franchise.
Jurassic Park: San Diego was the original site for John Hammond’s dream and where he intended to set up shop. A facility with a massive arena as the centerpiece, this Jurassic Park was a more traditional zoo designed by InGen to compete with San Diego’s other attractions. However, the site was abandoned near completion when Hammond set his sights on the much larger Isla Nublar.
In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Hammond’s nephew Peter Ludlow planned to complete the project and salvage what dinosaurs they could from InGen’s cloning facilities on Site B. After having tranquilized and transported a pair of Tyrannosaurs onboard a ship, disaster struck when one of the dinosaurs escaped and went on a rampage in San Diego. The facility and its iconic amphitheater were glimpsed briefly in the finale of The Lost World: Jurassic Park when Ian Malcolm and Sara Harding attempted to lure the escaped T-rex back to the ship with its child. What became of Jurassic Park: San Diego afterward remains unknown.
Isla Nublar was to be InGen’s crown jewel, a pinnacle of modern science, and the foundation of a new financial enterprise. John Hammond envisioned the island as a theme park, resort, and prehistoric preserve. Heavily regulated, reliant on experimental technology, and boasting high-tech attractions like its computer-automated safari, Jurassic Park was planned to be the flagship for a one-of-a-kind vacation experience where people could see and interact with extinct animals.
Beneath all the wonders Jurassic Park offered, it had bugs to work out before opening day, and they were bigger than the Meganeuras buzzing around the Sauropod paddock. Sick dinosaurs and poisonous plants were just some of the problems scientists didn’t anticipate, but they weren't the reason that Jurassic Park ultimately failed. Before the resort could open, a test audience arrived to prove that Isla Nublar was viable and safe. However, a violent storm, planned sabotage by employee Dennis Nedry, and dinosaurs escaping during the chaos were the final nails in Jurassic Park’s amber-coated coffin. Unlike in the Jurassic Park novels, in which napalm bombs destroyed the island, in the movies, InGen’s facilities were abandoned until Jurassic World.
Not unlike Disneyland, John Hammond envisioned sister parks in Europe and Asia. InGen had planned to build them in Portugal’s Azores and a site somewhere near Japan, respectively. Perhaps the most mysterious of the parks, they were projected to begin construction upon the success of the original park on Isla Nublar.
In the movies, besides a brief cameo from Jurassic Park: Europe in the board room scene, not much else is said about the parks. However, the questionable canon of Telltale’s Jurassic Park: The Game provides some better insight into what Jurassic Park’s Europe status was. According to the InGen Field Guide, Jurassic Park: Europe was the next major project to be undertaken with cooperation from the Portuguese government. Meanwhile, beyond Michael Chrichton’s books, Jurassic Park: Japan scarcely got a mention. It’s unlikely neither park had made it beyond preliminary planning and hopes for the future.
In an alternate universe where Jurassic Park still failed, it received new life and a successful second chance. In the movie, when Hammond lamented he should’ve built in Florida, he took it to heart in the creation of a second park. Known as Isla Aventura, this Jurassic Park was built in a geographically nebulous location somewhere off the coast of the United States or near Orlando. Unlike the previously mentioned parks, this one exists and receives tourists daily at Universal’s Islands of Adventure.
Although never appearing in the movies or novels, a special from the late ‘90s explained Isla Aventura’s backstory, showcased the park’s construction, and outlined the alternate history created from Jurassic Park. Additionally, actor Richard Attenborough reprised his role as John Hammond for the queue video of Jurassic Park River Adventure, explaining how things have changed from what happened on Isla Nublar. These days, the story Universal developed for their Florida theme park is nebulous, as more recent attractions suggest a transition to Jurassic World. It is unknown whether or not Isla Aventura still exists or abandoned to make way for the Velocicoaster’s and Raptor Encounter’s premises.
The successor to the original Jurassic Park, a team managed to finally salvage Isla Nublar and open a functioning theme park and resort in 2005. Designed to be everything John Hammond envisioned before his death, industrialist Simon Masrani took Jurassic Park to the next level. With high-tech attractions such as the gyrospheres and Mosasaur lagoon, it allowed a level of animal interactivity unlike anything before. Additionally, its amenities provided unparalleled luxury when compared to Isla Nublar’s antecedent. Although pushing the science into more disturbing applications, their scientists created dinosaur hybrids such as the Scorpios rex and Indominus rex.
The Jurassic World movies chronicle the fall of the theme park and how it expanded in ways never intended beyond the park’s towering wooden gates. The Indominus rex was a new species of dinosaur synthesized to be the ultimate predator and a new attraction to “scare the kids.” Proving to be more intelligent and powerful than the I-rex’s creators ever gave it credit for, it escaped captivity to do irreparable damage to the resort. Forced into a final confrontation with Jurassic Park’s T-rex and a new squad of trained raptors, the creature drowned when snagged by the Mosasaur. That, however, was not the end of Isla Nublar, which came in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. When the island’s volcano, Mt. Sibo, threatened to destroy all the dinosaurs living among the ruins left in Jurassic World’s aftermath, a secret expedition spearheaded by Hammond’s old partner Benjamin Lockwood meant to rescue the animals from extinction. After the volcano went off and destroyed Isla Nublar’s remnants, Lockwood’s grandaughter released the rescued dinosaurs on the mainland into the wild, with Ian Malcolm proclaiming, “Welcome to Jurassic World.”
John Hammond had a dream to do the impossible, and just like the animals InGen cloned, it evolved. Jurassic Park as a series is a beautiful and tragic insight into how even the most hopeful plans, with the best of intentions, don’t always work out, no matter how much people want them to. There’s a poetic irony that began with a single zoo and a wish to showcase dinosaurs to the entire world, spread out and expanded at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but not in the way InGen ever intended, with John Hammond’s legacy now loose in the wild and unrestrained.