Let your adventure begin

I asked Katelynn Courtney to write a guest post today. She had an amazing experience in Hawaii during her visit over Labor day….

Koalua Ranch, Movie Site Tour
First thing I see when I arrive to Koalua Ranch are the massive green mountains towering up to the heavens. They are the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen and that is when I understand why so many movies and TV shows go there to film. To get inside the park you walk into the gift shop/cafe. We walk past the fence area of horses to get to our designated waiting area spot. The waiting area has a TV hanging on the wall and playing Jurassic Park. The bus arrives with Koalua Ranch logo on the side. Everyone hops in for the movie site tour. Our tour guide gave us some history about the ranch till we arrived at our first stop. First stop was an old WWII bunker. Inside we saw a bunch of movie posters with small descriptions of which scenes were filmed on the ranch. Plus there were movie props from certain movies. They kept the model replicating the ranch and the setup for a big battle scene from Windtakers. They also kept the metal frame of the geosphere from Jurassic World and had it displayed inside. There was a room filled with props from the TV show Lost. As we reach the exit of the bunker, an animatronic velociraptor and t-rex are stationed by. Only their necks and heads moved. We load back onto the bus and head more to the center of the ranch. We drive by grassy landmarks where George of the Jungle, Triple Frontier(Netflix film), Windtakers, Young Mighty Joe, Fifty First Dates, and Jurassic Park were filmed. Surprisingly only one scene from the original Jurassic Parks was filmed on Koalua Ranch. It is the scene when we first see the T-Rex
peak out of the trees and attack the jeeps. There is a small statue of the dinosaur on that spot now. We didn’t see any spots from the Jurassic World movies. Those are saved for a different tour, Jurassic Adventure Tour. We come up to a small mountain peak that is famously known as
gorilla’s kiss because the rock formation looks like a gorilla and a chimp facing each other. As we reach the end of the tour we hit one last spot where we can walk around and take pictures. It is a dirt spot full of giant bones from the film King Kong: Skull Island. There was one giant gorilla skull, fully connected giant rib cage, other smaller bones from arms and legs
scattered around, and a stegosaurus skull. More of the Koalua mountain range was in the background, which makes for a perfect shot for a prehistoric landmark. It was a fun tour to go on. The tour guide was great. He shared information about the movies and the ranch with jokes to keep us engaged. The ranch itself stills runs as a ranch so there are cattle that roam around and they also grow produce like mangos and avocados. The
ranch will also keep running the tours when a new film crew comes on the property to film the next movie/tv show. So next time you go, you could be lucky enough to see how they are filmed in person.

Katelynn is a graduate of George Fox University majoring in Cinema and Media Communications, she currently lives in Lewiston, Idaho.