'Jurassic World: The Ride' POV Video & First Reaction

Universal Studios Hollywood has refurbished the classic Jurassic Park: The Ride, turning it into Jurassic World: The Ride. The new attraction brings a new modern color scheme to match up with the current franchise and adds a few characters from the hit movie, including Chris Pratt's Owen Grady, Bryce Dallas Howard's Clare Dearing, BD Wong's Henry Wu, the Mosasaurus, and the Indominus rex. Universal has still yet to announce a grand opening for the attraction, but the raft ride began "technical rehearsals" on Thursday, allowing the first park guests to experience it. We were lucky to be at the park on Friday afternoon, and we recorded a vlog about our experience on the new Jurassic World: The Ride. Hit the jump to watch the Jurassic World The Ride video.

That video comes from our new theme park-focused YouTube channel Ordinary Adventures, so please subscribe if you haven't done so already! We have a lot of coverage of theme parks, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, and more. Watch the video above to see a video of the queue, the whole ride itself, and our video reaction.

Most of you probably know, Jurassic Park: The Ride was created for Universal Studios Hollywood in June 1996. On the 25th anniversary celebration of the movie, it was announced that the ride would be closed down and rethemed and updated to match the successful 2015 film Jurassic World. The ride keeps some of the dinosaur encounters from the original attraction, including Stegosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Velociraptor, and Dilophosaurus. New to the attraction is an opening sequence that takes place indoors, putting the raft ride in the center of a tunnel that goes through Mosasaurus lagoon aquarium observatory. And the finale has been reworked to put us in the center of a battle between the Tyrannosaurus rex and the Indominus rex before the riders' raft plunges down an 84-foot waterfall.

The aquarium observatory section responds to real-world weather, which means if it's raining outside, it will appear also to be raining in the tank. Theme park rides have done this before with day and night, but I think it may be a first to emulate the outside weather. Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and B.D. Wong reprise their respective characters (Owen Grady, Claire Dearing, and Henry Wu) in the 20-30 minute video loop in the queue line. Howard and Pratt both appear on screens inside the ride itself.

I've always been a huge fan of Jurassic Park: The Ride and was nervous that the Jurassic World make-over would mean the elimination of the animatronic dinosaurs in favor of screens. They did do some of that, replacing the inial Brontosaurus with the screen-based adventure into the Mosasaurus aquarium. I was shocked that I enjoyed the Mosasaurus sequence more than the actual huge animatronic dino. It might be that the long-necked dinosaur was worse for wear out in the sun all these years and never really looked great in the first place. But the screens that emulate the Mosasaurus aquarium look fantastic, and I loved how they used it to make this ride an ever more wet experience.

When we rode the attraction the water cannons on the last freefall drop were not yet working, and I heard from a castmember that they are hoping to have that up and running before the official grand opening. Universal has yet to announce a date for that, so your guess is as good as mine at this point. Be warned, by the time we got off the ride they had stopped the technical rehearsals and were only allowing castmembers and some VIP Tour guests to experience the ride, so don't go to the park expecting it will be open and running.