As a kid I was practically obsessed with dinosaurs, so the idea of a whole themed land based on dinosaurs would've been really exciting - before Dinoland USA, I had to make my parents go on Universe of Energy 4 times a day (I can't believe I sat through 45 mins of lecture just to see dinosaurs over and over... but I did).
I was in high school when I first visited Animal Kingdom, so maybe I lost some of that childlike enthusiasm, but I don't know... Dinoland USA just never really did anything for me. The emphasis of the land's design seemed to be far too much on American paleontology and badlands/highway stuff, rather than on the dinosaurs themselves. The signature attraction was something of a disappointment, too - yeah it had dinosaurs, but mostly it was just bumping around a non-descript collection of overly dark fake shrubberies. You saw the dinosaurs very briefly, and they just mostly stood there and snorted at you. It felt like figures in a warehouse, not like a real prehistoric space. Although I generally find Universal the inferior experience to Disney, for me personally, Jurassic Park River Adventure beats Dinoland USA by an order of magnitude.
So how would I redo Dinoland USA? I would bulldoze the whole thing, in all honesty, and start from scratch. (That only costs $1 right? I've played SimCity
)
I would forget about paleontology, and just have the entryway be a huge portal to the Mesozoic built by the Dino Institute - you walk through a tunnel with some cool special effects and you're back in time. I would definitely do a slow moving boat ride through a primeval forest - and I would make sure to have full-size animatronic brachiosaurs that you could see from a distance as you emerge from the tunnel. I would do a restaurant on a terrace overlooking the forest and boats as well. The restaurant would, of course, sell paleo/primal cuisine, and be rustic looking
I would keep the Indiana Jones ride system for the thrill ride, but significantly redress it - as an unauthorized expedition into deinonychus territory. The environment would be much more lit, and the excitement would come from grotesque feathered dinosaurs popping out at you. I could also see a triceratops charging the jeep, and an escape under the legs of a sauropod. It might be a ripoff, but it would be cool to replicate the tall grass sequence from Lost World, or to have the jeeps take you into a dinosaur graveyard, or the ruins of a former science outpost that now serves as a deinonychus nest, so that you can have sparks and explosions and such.
What do you think?