Jurassic Park: From Kauaʻi to Kualoa Ranch

The film opens here on Kauaʻi's north shore, where a park employee falls prey to the unseen predator being loaded into a container. The same garden later hosted the raptor enclosure set, where the group watches a baby velociraptor hatch. Limahuli Garden, run by the National Tropical Botanical Garden, is still open to visitors for an admission fee, and taro terraces dating to the island's first Polynesian arrivals run through the grounds.

Visitor guidance: Open to visitors for an admission fee, on the Kūhiō Highway on Kauaʻi's north shore.

The film's amber mine is not in the Dominican Republic at all. An early scene at the Mano de Dios Amber Mine, where the lawyer Gennaro decides that a respected palaeontologist is needed on board, was filmed near Hoʻopiʻi Falls on the Kapaʻa Stream, inland from Kapaʻa. It is the amber that matters: the park's dinosaurs, the visitors will soon learn, were cloned from DNA in mosquitoes preserved in it.

Location precision: The Mano de Dios Amber Mine exists only in the film; the pin marks the real falls that played it.

An outdoor café on Kapaʻa's waterfront, on the Kūhiō Highway, stood in for San José, Costa Rica. Here Dennis Nedry, the park's disgruntled computer programmer, meets Lewis Dodgson, a man working for Hammond's corporate rival, who has bribed him to steal frozen dinosaur embryos. Nedry is handed a shaving cream can built to hide them and paid to smuggle them out of the park — the betrayal that sets everything going wrong.

Location precision: The San José café is invented; the pin marks the Kapaʻa waterfront where the location guide places it.

Every visitor to Isla Nublar arrives over this waterfall. The helicopter scenes — the guests coming in, and the group leaving at the end — were shot at the 122-metre cascade in Hanapēpē Valley, and it has been called Jurassic Falls ever since. The falls can only be reached by helicopter, and most of the island's helicopter tours still fly over them.

Visitor guidance: Seen best from the air; the Hanapepe Valley Lookout on the Kaumualii Highway gives the landward view.

On an estate at 6191 Hauaala Road, north of Kapaʻa, the crew built the park’s visitor centre: a facade 60 feet high and nearly 200 feet long. It is where the group first hears the whole story, that the dinosaurs were cloned from DNA taken from prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber, and where the film ends, with the survivors cornered by the two raptors until the Tyrannosaurus arrives. Only the exterior was built here; the interiors were filmed on a stage in Los Angeles.

Location precision: The facade stood on a private estate at 6191 Hauaala Road; the pin marks Kealia, the hamlet in its address.

At the foot of Mount Waiʻaleʻale, whose summit is one of the rainiest spots on earth, the crew built the Jurassic Park gate that marks the start of the theme park tour, the moment the visitors' cars roll into the park. The gates were removed when filming ended, but two tall poles still stand on either side of the path.

Location precision: The gates were a temporary set at the mountain's foot; the pin marks the summit of Mount Waiʻaleʻale above them.

Visitor guidance: Reaching the two poles takes an eight-mile hike.

Filming began here on 24 August 1992, in the remote Olokele Canyon. Crews raised fences 24 feet high to stand in for the electrified perimeter of the Tyrannosaurus paddock in the daytime scenes; the longest stretch ran over 200 feet, and the whole job took more than 6 miles of cable. In the film Grant and the children, on their way back to the visitor centre, have to climb over this fence to go on.

Location precision: The fence ran somewhere inside the Olokele valley; the pin marks the Olokele locality at its mouth.

Two weeks after Hurricane Iniki passed over Kauaʻi on the last scheduled day of the island shoot, the Gallimimus stampede moved to the other island. The herd had been planned for Kauaʻi; it ended up running through Kualoa Ranch on Oʻahu’s windward coast, picked for its high cliffs over the empty plain first scouted, and the Tyrannosaurus grabs one of the runners while Grant and the kids shelter under a fallen tree. The ranch runs guided tours and horseback rides today, and the tree is still there.

Visitor guidance: The ranch runs guided tours and horseback rides, about 24 miles from Waikiki.

The garden played two parts: the exterior of the maintenance shed, and the place where Grant stumbles across the nest. He digs the hatched eggs out from under giant Moreton Bay fig trees and works out that the dinosaurs are breeding, which their amphibian DNA allows, since frogs can change sex in a single-sex environment. Allerton, at 4425 Lāwai Road in Koloa, is open to visitors for an admission fee.

Visitor guidance: Open to visitors for an admission fee at 4425 Lāwai Road, Koloa.