Trivia: To make the water in the glass on the dashboard 'jump', they strung a guitar string from the underside of the dashboard to a bolt on the floor and then plucked the string.
Trivia: The T-Rex roars are a combination of tiger, elephant, alligator, whale, and dog sounds.
Trivia: When the grandchildren and Grant are crawling above the drop-down ceiling to flee from the raptors, the raptors at one point have "squares" of light shining on them. If you look closely at this light, these "squares" of light are not really squares, but the letters A T C G, the DNA sequence abbreviations.
Trivia: In the original script, the T-Rex didn't save the people at the end. Grant shot one of the raptors and the other was killed when he got crushed under the dinosaur ribcage bone. Steven Spielberg thought the audience would hate him if he didn't bring in the T-Rex again.
Trivia: Harrison Ford was the original choice to play Dr. Grant, but the producers decided to cast the relatively unknown (and much cheaper) Sam Neill in order to free up more money for special effects.
Trivia: At the beginning of the movie, the helicopter flies into a valley from the sea. This valley is actually on the north shore of Maui, close to Kahakuloa. When it lands at the bottom of the waterfall, the site is actually on Kauai, where most of the movie was filmed.
Trivia: Ian Malcom's line, "do you mean 'we're extinct'," is actually what the go-motion animator Phill Tippet said after seeing the new CG technology that would replace his models.
Trivia: The scary sound of the raptor is a mixture of two rather gentle marine animals; the dolphin and the walrus.
Trivia: This movie birthed almost the entire computer graphics industry. The computer software required to create the effects in this film did not exist at the time the film was being made. The application they used was created for the purpose of realizing the dinosaurs for the film. That software? Alias Wavefront (I "think" it was Power Animator). The software was so rich in features and versatile in its functions that it went on to ultimately be put into a package that became available commercially and which has paved the way and revolutionized desktop 3D graphics. Out of neccessity comes progress. That software is still available and improving today, though now it is called "Maya" and Alias sold to Autodesk, producers of the rival package, 3D Studio Max.
Trivia: The helicopter landing pad had to be put in by helicopter because they were unable to get trucks in there. So a helicopter brought in the landing pad, they shot the scene of them landing, and then a helicopter took the pad away.
Trivia: Alan Grant digs up dinosaurs in Montana. When Sam Neill's character (Vasily) dies in "The Hunt for Red October," his last words are, "I would liked to have seen Montana."
Trivia: After Ray tells Hammond about the Explorers' headlights problem - item 151 on the day's computers glitch list, when Hammond walks over to Dennis Nedry to complain, one of his computers (the one on the left) has a window open playing scenes from the movie Jaws, also directed by Steven Spielberg.
Trivia: An interesting tidbit; in the book, Ian Malcolm actually dies in the end, even making reference to loading his dead body onto a plane to transport it home. He was then miraculously brought back for the sequel, saying early in the book "rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated", to bring the books more in line with the movies.
Trivia: The voices of the dinosaurs are actually mix of different animals. The dilophosaurus sound is actually a swan, and its voice before it attacks is a combination of a monkey, snake and a seagull.
Trivia: The apatosaurus sounds are a combination of whales and donkeys.
Trivia: Just before Hammond talks about his flea circus, the camera pans across various Jurassic Park merchandise. One thing you see briefly is a book entitled "The Making of Jurassic Park", by Don Shay and Jody Duncan; the actual 'making of' book for the film, which has the same title, was by the same authors. (The cover is different though.)
Trivia: The two leads are named Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler. Two real dinosaur book authors are named Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler.
Trivia: The "Mr. DNA" sequence was Steven Spielberg's way of condensing a lot of the book's exposition into a few minutes.
Trivia: In the original novel, Hammond and Dr. Wu die, while Genarro and Muldoon survive. All four characters have the opposite fate in this film. Dr. Wu also has a much larger role in the novel, though he would eventually also have a larger role in the Jurassic World trilogy.
Trivia: The T-Rex was not supposed to break the glass of the Ford Explorer. The screams of the children are genuine.
Chosen answer: Yes. The first opening day of Disneyland in California was catastrophic. The pavement was fresh and the sun was so hot high-heeled shoes actually sunk into the walkways. Counterfeit tickets were made, resulting in more people than the park had room for. They ran out of food and drinks. Bathrooms clogged and shut down. Many of the rides broke down on opening day. The Storybook Land Canal Boats had to be pulled by cast members in rubber boots. At the time, there were no guide rails for Autopia; some of the cars crashed into each other, making them inoperable. A gas leak in Fantasyland lead to the land being temporarily closed for part of the day.
David Yard