Both this series and Land of the Lost have opening titles featuring a scenic, rocky canyon and a family moving down a rapidly-flowing river in a rubber raft.
Valley of the Dinosaurs intro	Land of the Lost intro
Butler family	Marshall family

The narration of the opening titles reveals that the Butler family was in the Amazon for their river rafting trip. The Amazon is a large rainforest in the northern part of South America. Since evidence through the series indicates the Butlers are still on modern Earth, the lost valley in which they find themselves must be within the Amazon rainforest and not the prehistoric past or on another world. The location may have been inspired by that of the Lost World, from the 1912 Arthur Conan Doyle novel of the same name, on a plateau (rather than a valley) in the Amazon jungle.

The opening titles of the series declare that the Butler family has been flung into "a world that time forgot." This is a reference to the 1918 short novel The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with a similar theme, about a submarine that emerges from the sea into a land of prehistoric creatures.

In "S.O.S." we learn that the pool of water from which the Butlers' raft surfaced into the Valley of the Dinosaurs is called by the cave dwellers, the Black Lagoon. Possibly the writers were inspired by the 1954 classic creature film, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which takes place in the Amazon, as does Valley of the Dinosaurs.

At 0:37 during the opening titles, the sauropod dinosaur depicted is probably meant to be a Brontosaurus (now known as Apatosaurus).

At 0:48 during the opening titles, the dino depicted is presumably a Stegosaurus, with alternating plates along its spine.

As the Butler family is hauled up the cliff face on a rope by Gorok's clan at 0:54 in the opening titles, notice that the family dog, Digger, is also borne aloft, on John's right shoulder.

At 0:58 in the opening titles, notice that there are two large birds and the thigh and shank of a hoofed animal hanging on the cave wall in anticipation of a future meal. Painted on the wall are renderings of a mammoth, a deer or elk, a bison, a predatory beast, and what looks like the horns of a moose. John is inspecting a large tusk, probably from a mammoth, with Gara.

A dinosaur (Brontosaurus) roars into the POV of the viewer at the end of the opening titles, just as a Tyrannosaurus does in the opening of Land of the Lost.

Besides the foreground Brontosaurus, notice there are a couple others in the water in the background behind the Valley of the Dinosaurs logo and one of the beasts dips its head under the water and back up as the announcer proclaims the series' title.

Memorable Dialog

A World That Time Forgot.wav