[imagesource: Universal Orlando Resort]

There have been many deaths caused by the infamous velociraptor throughout the films of the Jurassic movie franchise.

It is the sort of creature that we should recognise as being an absolute terror and therefore stay away from at all costs.

But the new VelociCoaster ride opening on Thursday at Universal Orlando’s Islands of Adventure theme park in Florida will probably have people eagerly running towards the horror instead of away from it, three years after the idea was first conceived.

The VelociCoaster stands at around 47 metres tall, looking out over the iconic jungle foliage that surrounds the area’s iconic Jurassic Park welcome centre, and comes equipped with every kind of thrill that a Jurassic movie fan desires.

With the goal of scaring you beyond measure, ride producer Shelby Honea told Entertainment Weekly about how and why the ride came about:

“We went back and looked at the storyboards from the Gyrosphere ride [from the films], which is such a fun piece of the canon,” Honea says.

She explains that the ride’s story is set before the events of Jurassic World, with the doomed park (eventually overrun by its killer, resurrected dinos from millennia ago) still fully functional, as operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) launches a new attraction, much to animal behavioralist Owen Grady’s (Chris Pratt) scepticism.

The ride functions as a nostalgic callback to the classic thrills felt in Jurassic Park, and if you look carefully while screaming your heart out, it is also lined with hints of what’s to come in the film to be released next year – Jurassic World: Dominion.

To warm you up to the point of view (POV) video below, here’s a little description of the ride:

The raptors (of which there are many along the ride’s course) are the least of guest concerns: On your journey, you’ll hit two launches, four inversions, and manoeuvres calculated to make you feel like you’re going to eject from your chair — namely what Honea describes as the finale’s “Mosasaurus Roll,” an in-line twist approximately 15 feet above the park’s central lagoon that, unlike most coaster inversions, relinquishes centrifugal force in favour of negative g’s (translation: you feel like you’re being hurled into the depths below instead of pushed down into your seat.)

That run-on sentence felt like a wild ride all on its own.

Strap in, and let’s go:

Reminds me of Ratanga Junction’s Cobra back in the day.

To finish, here’s a tour through the Jurassic World tribute store:

[source:entertainmentweekly]