A place to let your imagination saur
IF THERE is a child in your life who is crazy about the cretaceous period, dippy about the diplodocus or tantalised by T-Rex, there is only one place to go this summer.
Dinosaurs in the Wild at Birmingham’s NEC is a family adventure like no other.
And for those already planning the October break, it’s coming closer, to Manchester.
Brave travellers are whisked back in time 67million years, where the giants of prehistory are brought vividly to life.
The live-action tour starts with a safety talk from Joe, who works for Chronotex, a firm who take scientists and tourists back to the late Cretaceous era.
With the warning, ‘‘Remember, if you can see a dinosaur, it can see you’’, ringing in our ears, we climbed nervously into our time-travel pod. After a short, bumpy ride, the shutters XXXXXX xxxxxx opened to reveal a dusty landscape with
Xxxx swaying trees, distant volcanoes and … dinosaurs. We’d arrived.
A breathtaking drive past great, lumbering creatures – with a huge herd of triceratops in the background – involved one hairy encounter with an angry ankylosaurus.
But “control” made sure we reached TimeBase 67 safely.
Once there, our guide Hannah took us around the base, which is an incredibly detailed research centre.
Here, time travellers can sift through dino dung, measure up against a T-Rex tooth and observe up close the ticks that feed off dinosaur skin.
We entered an autopsy room where a doctor was examining the innards of a dead dinosaur.
And there was even a hatchery where dozens of eggs are incubated. Our group witnessed the “birth” of a dakotaraptor.
The whole Dinosaurs in the Wild experience is realised with phenomenal attention to detail, blending scripted actors, high-end digital graphics and animatronics that make 2017 feel far away.
The mix of this cutting-edge audio-visual technology and the ability of the guides to tell the dramatic story means nobody can fail to be drawn into the world of TimeBase 67.
Throughout it all, though, some of the scientists did seem a little edgy, nervous even.
When Hannah mentioned we were going to the Lookout – with its large, reinforced windows offering a panorama of the life teeming on the Cretaceous plains outside – we got some odd looks from the scientists.
But we were all safe in there from the T-Rex, weren’t we?