How did you become a Jurassic Park fan?

Let's hear some stories, y'all!

When I was a 3 my aunt, a big sci-fi nerd herself (she also introduced me to SW), showed me the first movie and a love affair was created.

When I was 3 my dad took me to the theater to see it. One of my first memories of childhood was watching Jurassic Park in theaters.

I was already obsessed with dinosaurs and the film coming out when I was 6 created a huge cultural event - it was everywhere and I was sucked in!

I was born in 1990 so when the first one was in theaters in 1993 I was way too young to even be aware of it. To me the first real phenomenon that I truly remember was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers later that year. That was the first real pop culture phenomenon I was really a fan of. And while I loved that the first season heavily featured dino zords and dinosaur related things, it was not untill late 1996 (when I was 6) that I really became a heavier dinosaur fan when I got the Land Before Time movies on VHS for that christmas. I watched them a lot so my mother saw I liked dinosaur related stuff and decided to buy me the Jurassic Park VHS (Around late december 1996 or very early 1997). And I loved it. I spent most of early 1997 watching JP and Space Jam all day every day.

But since almost 4 years had passed since the movie was on theaters, I remember being sad that there was no merchandise for JP by that point. Lucky for me The Lost World was right around the corner and dino mania was at an all time high both for me and the rest of the world. Regardless of what youtubers wanting to be cool in 2006 said, TLW was a huge phenomenon in 1997, dinosaurs and TLW merchandise was everywhere, and from what I saw, everyone was into it. I never saw a single person that disliked (much less hated) the movie. Wich is why I hate everytime I hear a youtuber say "nobody liked TLW" or trying to imply that it was viewed as some sort of disaster with a The Last Jedi type backlash.

Then my Jurassic fever went down by mid 1998 (when I was around 8 years old) when I became much more into Star Wars, NBA, and music stuff and I remained that way untill around mid 2001 when I started watching JP3 merchandise in Toys R Us… I was like "Whoa, it has been a while since I was aware of anything Jurassic...but...wait...what is that dinosaur? Eh...Maybe just a new dinosaur…"

And oh boy how wrong I was...You know the rest.

I was 8 years old and it was the school holidays here in Australia back in 93. I can still see my dad turning to me and saying "wanna go see Jurassic Park?". We went and saw it twice over the next couple of weeks and we have both been fans ever since. Now my 11 year old daughter is a big fan after showing her the first 4 films and taking her to see fallen kingdom.

I was eight going on nine when the first film came out. I was very excited by it because dinosaurs were such an important and essential part of my life. How and exactly when dinosaurs became an active of interest was that my family and I were out west visiting vacationing at the time and we saw a flat bed truck hauling an Apatosaurus vertebrae. I was entranced by it. I didn't know what it was exactly, just that it looked cool. So we stopped at a Sinclair gas station and I got one of those Marx Plastic Dinosaur sets. My mom told me about what dinosaurs were and how she thought they were cool while she was growing up. So after staying the night at the hotel, and watching the news talking about where that Apatosaurus vertebrae was going we stopped off in Fruita, Colorado at the Dinosaur Journey museum. I was 2 going on 3 I think at the time as this was was in '87 I believe. While I don't recall everything that happened since it was so long ago; I recall my emotions with seeing all of it and I was very captivated by these animals that had once existed. It launched an obsession where I was getting the Dino-Riders toys (and trying to watch the cartoon since it was on massively early) as well as the Definitely Dinosaurs toyline. So I was very taken by the dino-mania then of the late 80s/early 90s. Eventually Jurassic Park came out in '93 and being 8 it was a natural step into that dinosaur mania I still have. I do remember a time definitely before Jurassic Park came out and how it sort of changed and impacted the interest for many including myself.

Typical awkward teenager that had always been interested in movies, movie critters, and special effects. My dad and brother had read the book. I later borrowed it from the high school library some Friday afternoon, pre-JP1, in the early nineties. I began reading it on the bus, got home, resumed reading, and didn't stop until I'd read the whole damn book by five AM next morning. I loved that book, it was fascinating and frightening, and I'd go on to read a bunch of Crichton's catalog.
But I didn't know much about dinosaurs, my imagination wasn't filling in the novel very well and I wound up checking out every book the library had on dinosaurs. I was drawing them and making 1:1 enlargements of compys and raptors, etc. Everything I did for art class was a dinosaur.
Later I'd be reading some movie trade magazine with an article about Memoirs of an Invisible Man which mentioned antagonist Sam Neill starting work on Jurassic Park and I almost flipped that a JP movie was coming out. T2 had just blown my socks off and I'd spent too much time working out how it was made, it's great practicals and all the new CGI stuff. So you can bet I was there pre-opening night for a packed theatre showing of JP1 in June 1993. I'll never forget how the whole theatre jumped after "Where's the goat?"
So of course I went nuts and got a bunch of the models, magazines, the movie book, snipping things out of the newspaper, magazines covering JP, lots of single run stuff cashing in on dinosaurs, etc. I never played many JP games, but when I got my hands on the Sega Genesis JP I played it for around eight hours straight, finally beating it in both Grant and Raptor modes. Years later when JP2TLW came out, I saw it double-header with Fifth Element. What a day at the theatre that was!
I got into costuming, did several outfits, made a bird costume, finally made a dinosaur costume. But when JP was turning 20, I had to do something for it. So I built a room-sized Jurassic Party that could be set up in a hotel room as a room party at conventions. I made an electric fence with the lights, forest-y backdrop & topdrop, an East Dock sign that people could spin, made a forty minute music video out of the movie, and any dozens of props, signs, toys trinkets whatever I'd set up back then. Since I'd take the bed and shove it into the window, I'd have to sleep on the floor, and the mornings were like waking up in Jurassic Park. I even made a made a cosplay for a Jurassic Park employee so it'd just look like I was on the job. I did so much JP that I got a nastygram from Universal.
I hosted some JP talks at cons and mini Jurassic Parties that didn't involve setting up that damn fence. A friend put me up to doing a JP talk at KawaCon, so there I was in my cosplay talking to a room of fans and someone asks "If JP was real would you really work there?" What a cool question, of course the answer was yes. No more making costumes! I would give everything away and just go.

Phew. Sorry about the book up there but that's pretty much my history with JP. I don't do a lot of JP, but when I do I go all in. One night I was outside in the dark painting fence plastics because the Jurassic Party build was behind s'hedule and a friend told me "you know, it's just a movie, right?" To me JP is more than a movie or even a franchise. It's everything I like about being in an exotic environment, computer & system stuff, critters & animals, creepy lab stuff, an illusion of control, imminent danger, a project going over the top, fighting for survival. People talk a lot of shit about JP///, often rightfully so, but if only for looking at, I rank it very highly for scenics, dinosaurs running around, that creepy lab is one of my favorite scenes from the movies, and some of the best and last practical dinosaur effects in the franchise.

I was about 7 years old and Jurassic Park 3 was about to come out in cinemas. And obviously because of that they were playing the original film like crazy on television. In case you don’t want do the math I was born in 94 and my parents didn’t allow any scary movies. Even when I got a bit older.

So why is that important? Well for some reason my parents actually had the good judgment to tape the film on vhs and let me watch it at night. I’d literally never heard of it before. As a child I knew immediately I was watching a masterpiece and I was glued to the screen. I remember vividly screaming when you see Arnold’s arm and my dad getting a kick out of it.


Also to this day I still have that VHS from 2001. It had the commercial breaks in it so it’s a total time capsule to see all that stuff coming out in 2001. Before 9/11 even.. creepy

Sam Neil actually hosts part of the commercial breaks and talks about JP3, as well as the original film playing. It’s cool as hell.

I was already into dinosaurs when I was in pre-kindergarden class back in 1992-1993, but Jurassic Park really sealed the deal for me. The first one I saw in theaters was TLW back in 1997, which was a good year for me in general. Actually, JP was also my gateway into Godzilla, which I'm thankful for since me being a fan really went into hibernation after JP3 and during the dead period.

In second grade, my class spent some time learning about dinosaurs and this was really what got me interested-- it was about the same time when most kids were growing out of their dinosaur phase. We had a visiting paleontologist, drew dinosaurs in art class, and visited a local museum. Naturally, I was introduced to Jurassic Park-- actually Jurassic Park /// first, and then was given the other movies in the earlier days of DVD. The next few years- until about fifth or sixth grade- I was all about Jurassic Park, but then that faded a bit and I went more towards more accurate dinosaurs and paleontology, though still retaining a passive interest for Jurassic Park. I got into it more again once Jurassic World came out and my favorite film franchise was back after all that time of rumors and false hope. More recently, in college, nostalgia is primarily the driving force behind it, particularly with the first movie.

I was always a dinosaur fan, growing up on the first Land Before Time, Dink the Little Dinosaur, Dino-Riders, and so on. I loved them. When Jurassic Park came out, my parents thought it would give me nightmares, so they didn’t allow me to see it in theaters. Despite that, we would play like we were in Jurassic Park all throughout summer school. A friend had seen it, so we had the basic gist; how the velociraptors could open doors, how the T-Rex couldn’t see movement, how the dilophosaur could spit... ah, good times. Some kids brought JP toys, and we all played with them. Had a blast, too! I was even able to buy my own: the brown velociraptor. I picked up the junior novelization, too. Read it before I ever saw the movie. I also got the GameBoy game that Christmas. When Easter came around, my parents picked up the VHS for me, and I Finally got to see the movie! I was instantly hooked. My sister and I watched it eight times that day, and many more throughout the next few months.

Then The Lost World came out, and my obsession went into overdrive. Another island? A Lost World website? New toys? I was all over it. My sister and I bought the new raptors the day we saw the movie and took them to the theater. After I saw the movie, I saw the Lost World novel at the grocery store. That blew my mind - I never paid any attention to the credits, so I didn’t know there had been a full-blown novel. Soon after that, I found the Jurassic Park novel in a used book store. Read the first, then the second. For a good number of years after that, my cousins and I would always play Jurassic Park on our vacations. I still love it to this day... and it blew my mind when I found out one of my childhood friends helped with the paint jobs on the new Jurassic World ride!

Jurassic Park III was actually the first Jurassic Park movie I ever saw as a kid... though I didn't see the entire thing. It was playing on television and I watched it from the beginning to Nash's death. I still remember that was when I stopped, because I found the Spinosaurus and how it easily killed two men to be terrifying.

Before I watched any of the movies all the way through, I was still exposed to the franchise. I remember seeing the first two movies at thrift stores on VHS, though I never had my mom buy them. At the time I thought I was too young to see the movies. I also remember playing the original Jurassic Park arcade game at my local Chuck E. Cheese, even managed to beat it with a friend once. I eventually found the junior novelization of the first movie at a thrift store and I brought it home. While reading it, I still hadn't seen the movie so I had to visualize the scenes in my head. Which could sometimes be different than what played out in the movie. Finally, I saw the original movie for the first time. Dinosaurs were my obsession back then and Jurassic Park was part of that obsession.

I didn't see the sequels right away. I remember watching the trailers for the sequels and scenes from the sequels on YouTube first. I think that was some of my first exposure to YouTube and after I did watch the sequels I would continue to watch videos related to the franchise on YouTube. Fan trailers for Jurassic Park 4, fan films, reviews, video game walkthroughs, etc.

My grandmother actually owned the novels. I had seen them on her bookshelf before, but it wouldn't be until after I had watched the movies that I decided to read them. I loved them and I was allowed to take them home with me.

Jurassic Park 4 became one of the films that I wanted to see most. While it was in development hell, I started writing fanfiction for my own sequel ideas. I often used elements from The Lost World novel not used in the movie, like a lot of its characters and action scenes. It was also around this time that I discovered JPLegacy. I didn't become a member right away, but I did explore the site and read the forums. Something else I loved doing was finding the old script drafts for movies that I enjoyed and reading them as a way to compare them to the final film.

When Jurassic Park had a 3D re-release in 2013, my mom took me to see it. I had a great time and it was by then that I had become a devoted fan of the franchise. I would wait eagerly for the next film and Jurassic World would become the first movie I gave a standing ovation to after seeing it.

I basically became a fan of the franchise due to two passions I had... a passion for dinosaurs and a passion for writing. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a paleontologist. Nowadays, I want to be a writer. Jurassic Park encouraged both of my passions and likely helped shape the person that I would become. But yeah, that's my story.