Yesterday we visited dinosaur land - okay it was more like dinosaur hall. Advertised as museum-quality dinosaurs in North America, the life-size dinosaurs were definitely impressive in size and movement. So, welcome to Jurassic Quest - and enter with caution.
The moment you walk in the door, you are greeted by dinosaurs from the very start. Each exhibit has a sign that states the type of dinosaur, major facts such as weight of the dinosaur, location, time period it lived, as well as a sideline box of fun facts about the dinosaur. The exhibit makes it very easy to learn about the dinosaurs in both written form as well as from the fine form, color, and movement of the life-size dinosaurs.
For example, one demonstration of realness included two dinosaurs fighting over meat. You can see two dinosaurs behind my girls and a little glimpse of the "meat". Later in the exhibit, they have much more gruesome examples of dinosaurs eating other dinosaurs. I will "pass" on sharing pictures of those - that's how real they look.
Beyond the individual signs for each dinosaur, the exhibit periodically has bigger banners with more information about the dinosaur era. This picture is a little bleary, but you will get the idea of the content that the exhibit has generated about the dinosaurs. This one is titled "The Rise of the Dinosaurs".
Did you know there were dinosaurs with feathers? I may have learned it at one time and forgotten, but it was cool to come around the corner and see the feathers on a dinosaur.
After you visit the life-size exhibits the exhibit hall path opens to a larger area of activities. They have dinosaur jump houses, face painting, fossil digging and more. Most of these activities cost additional money. I was a bit disappointed that they had a 2-tiered ticket for the kids, so that you had to pay more for the kids to do the really fun things. We paid $62 for the 4 of us to get in, and that seemed a bit pricey to then cut out many of the interactive experiences. I can appreciate the cost that must go into the building and maintaining of the life-size dinosaurs, but people are always looking for value in exchange for payment. Many of the value-added activities were part of the "additional" cost. Hopefully, in the future, they will find a way to include those value-added activities in the one-ticket cost.
I did see one face painted and it was high quality. Paying extra for the face painting makes sense to me. The rides on the life-size dinosaurs looked fun. I suppose if they didn't charge extra for the dinosaur ride, they would have lines that never ended.
Gabi really wanted to do the fossil digging, which I do believe should have been included in the cost of the base ticket, at a minimum.
One fun value-add that we did get to participate in was seeing and petting the "walking babies". These are life-size walking dinosaurs that anyone can pet. It was interesting to experience the life-size baby dinosaur right in front of the eyes, and even to pet such a baby (that couldn't bite you like it might have in reality).
The exhibit also had a few mini-dinosaurs that the kids could climb on for pictures. As these are always a favorite for the kids and parents, I do applaud the exhibit for having this extra to interact with.
One last activity that was included in the base price that I recommend doing is the making of a fossil in the craft area. At first glance, the craft area is chaotic and could be overwhelming. Nonetheless, the results of taking home your own home-made fossil is worth wading through the chaos.
The exhibit didn't let us down by missing out on a little dino commercialism. My girls and I love any store at the end of an exhibit, so we didn't mind at all. Lexi picked up the cutest dino flip wristlet that was fairly reasonably priced.
Was the exhibit worth going for the price? I love experiences of all shapes and kinds, so it was worth it for me. My ten-year old Lexi was bored past the first handful of dinosaurs, but then she's more of the interactive type, so she missed out on a lot of the "fun" for her personality type with the purchase of only a base ticket My seven-year old, Gabi, enjoyed the show much more, as observation of the dinosaurs and watching others in action was okay by her. You have to decide what kind of price works for your family and whether the base price versus the higher-priced ticket for the interactive experiences would match up with your family members and their interests.
The moment you walk in the door, you are greeted by dinosaurs from the very start. Each exhibit has a sign that states the type of dinosaur, major facts such as weight of the dinosaur, location, time period it lived, as well as a sideline box of fun facts about the dinosaur. The exhibit makes it very easy to learn about the dinosaurs in both written form as well as from the fine form, color, and movement of the life-size dinosaurs.
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