Photo Ride Report: Jurassic Jungle Boat Ride

New this year in Pigeon Forge is the Jurassic Jungle Boat Ride, a stand-alone “old mill” style dark ride. It’s a decently long, but slow-paced, “boat with wheels on a track” type ride, with frequent stops along the way to admire the show scenes. It’s also rather expensive at $12.00 plus tax for an adult ticket.

If you fall into the “any dark ride is a good dark ride” camp, you’ll probably enjoy it. If, on the other hand you’re more of a “the only worthwhile dark rides are at Disney or Universal” type, you’ll probably find it cheesy and lame. Personally, I enjoyed it, and would rank it on par with, or slightly better than, Knott’s Berry Farm’s defunct Kingdom of the Dinosaurs.

Fair warning, though: thar be spoilers ahead. So if you’d rather be surprised, scroll down to the pictures.

While most of the ride consists of stopping in front of animatronic dinosaurs that growl threateningly and then moving along, there are a couple of other interesting gags along the way. One involves a Plexiglas “skylight” that reveals a deluge of water falling towards the boat. And while this is in no way executed convincingly, it is a cute idea. Another is a reptilian body that slithers through a wall of foliage. Really, it’s just a big circle that turns continuously, but again I liked the idea.

And, finally, right when you think the ride is over, comes the big WTF moment, as the front of the boat is lifted up at about a 45-degree angle so that a big T-Rex head can pop out and menace you. Perhaps if this occurred in darkness, so that the unexpected upward movement was more disorienting, it might amount to something. But as it is, it’s just odd.

Still, the Jurassic Jungle Boat Ride is a worthwhile diversion if you’re a fan of this sort of thing. And, of course, it’s a rare example of a stand-alone dark ride--which in and of itself makes it sort of interesting.

Another group of confused riders about to disembark from their thrilling time travel adventure.

"Derivative? I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"Oh no, you're going back in time!"

"We're whalers on the moon...."

The station and most of the only "visible from the outside" portion of the ride.

The show building and parking lot.

The ride's placement on the Parkway. (It's that beige box right in the center of the picture.)

Wow, very randomly placed dark ride. If all the animatronics look like the ones in the boarding area, I've definately seen worse.

Being a dark ride fan, I'll have to hit this on my visit to Dollywood next year. Thanks for the info and pics!

I've never heard of this place. Thanks for posting! What do you mean by "boat on wheels"? It doesn't float freely, or what? I love dark rides, especially involving water, so I guess I might like this, although $12 for a ride is rediculous. That's worse than Manhattan Express in Vegas!

This ride is the biggest POS ever. We rode it last year a week after it opened and already a ton of the dinos were broke or falling apart.

Gee, I wonder where they got the idea for this ride...

^^ I remember that update! $12 bucks and still getting bad reviews. looks like I'll just drive by the next time I go to DW.

^^^^^ The boats are not free floating, no; they're powered by wheels sticking up from the track.

^^^^ I only took one "on ride" photo, for a couple of reasons. One was that I knew there was going to be some small amount of wetness, and I didn't want to risk my camera. Another was my desire to not be too obnoxious with the flash, since there were other people on the boat. And finally, I didn't want to miss anything while I was futzing around with my camera.

^^^ The ride opened about nine months ago, and I'd heard nothing but bad things. Honestly, though, I thought it was fine. Not that this is any excuse, but maybe it was more that the animatronics weren't entirely finished yet when you rode, rather than that they were "already broke." But everything appeared to be working the way it was designed to as far as I could tell.

^^ I'm sure that the ride was based entirely on their own original ideas--much like the same company's Earthquake ride in Gatlinburg.

It was totally inhouse design..we walked thru while it was being built. I just remember you could not sit on the front row, or the back row, only the 2 middle rows...cause they boat gets stuck.

Now if it was like maybe $5 ...yea, ok...but $12? That is more than the Screamin Swing.

I would like to know who decided to make a stand-alone dark ride. Talk about random.

I didn't want to miss anything while I was futzing around with my camera.