This past weekend Tom, the baby, my sister, brother-in-law, niece, nephew, and I piled in a van and headed down to the local fairgrounds for a traveling dinosaur exhibit. The radio and tv ads promised lots of learning AND rides on dinosaurs – the best of both worlds.
When we got there, we learned that it costs more to earn the right to ride on the dinosaurs and play in the bouncy castle, which everyone knows has been around since the late Jurassic era. So, we passed on the rides and stuck to the exhibit.
The exhibit consisted of a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs split up and displayed in various combinations of painted backdrops and fake plants – in one giant room. They all made noise and all had hot spotlights on them. I don’t know how the real dinosaurs got any sleep – all that screeching and light.
“Oh, come on,” you’re saying, “twenty-some animatronic screeching dinosaurs in an enclosed space doesn’t seem like it’d be that loud.” Well, first, don’t go making assumptions about the level of noise robots can make in a room, and second, you didn’t give me time to mention that they were also playing a movie over all the noise, too. That movie was Dinosaur, and it was turned up to eleven.
It was sort of like if you went to a nice eight course meal, but it was all served to you in one big trough, so it’s hard to say if it was actually delicious or not.
What did we see there? Here’s the two, uh, highlights?
The huge and ferocious Spinosaurus may have been an even larger predator than the T-Rex. Impressive, huh? Well, I’ll tell you what I was impressed by: their fabulous, colorful, rainbow-striped spine decoration that looks nothing like the rest of the body:
A dinosaur that looks like a graffiti artist got to him while he was sleeping? Awesome. Unfortunately, when I looked him up on wikipedia, none of the artist renderings include this 1980s roller skating rink-ready spine sculpture – they’re all natural looking and shit. Not only that, but even the info plaque from it’s own exhibit didn’t look the same:
Now I just don’t know what to think. I suppose that’s just what comes with having to guess what dinosaurs looked like based on their bones. We’ll never know the truth.
I think the most striking image was the realism of the T-Rex. The creators of this dinobot obviously worked really hard to capture the sad, flaccid, useless little arms they had. Science and animatronics prove that they kind of depressingly moved them around, trying to figure out what they could possibly use them for, in a very rhythmic motion. This made prey feel sorry for them, and when they would go to comfort the T-Rex, SUCKAH – they got eaten.
You can see how wily they were – they even shook their heads as if to say “no, no, I have no idea what to do with these two sad twigs attached to my chest, woe is me.” It’s why they’re called Nature’s Most Guilt Trip-iest Predator.
After an afternoon of heavy learning and extremely loud noise, we headed home, my head filled with amazing facts I made up and jumped to conclusions about. You’re never too old to pay a little too much to have your senses assaulted…with information.
I hate to even ask, how much did you “get” to pay for this amazing educational experience?
I’m not sure but the add-on dino ride/bouncy castle total for kids was about $25.
Forget trying to figure out how scientists know the colors of a Spinosaurus. I want to know how they know Spinosauruses supported gay pride?
P.S. Good for Spinosauruses.
Particularly since there aren’t even any surviving bones of Mr. Spino. Pure scientific conjecture. That’s a thing, right?
This wins the internet today and made me have all the giggles. That poor, sad T. Rex. “No! No!” he says, and sadly paddles his useless arm-stubs. (I love terrible museums. It’s a thing with me. I would seriously pay all the money for a terrible museum just to mock it. I think that says something awful about me, but I don’t even care.)
I love this kind of stuff, too. We went to a “museum” somewhere off the beaten path in a small Utah town, and it was mostly just a bunch of stuff, including a bed filled with old stuffed animals from the 1980s, and I thought it was awesome.
I was in a Rain Forest Cafe (a now defunct restaurant chain) once that made me feel like you describe.
Probably more expensive though.
And with crappier food.
There are Rain Forest Cafes at Disney World, where we just got back from, and I’m glad we didn’t opt to eat there, then!
No wonder they are extinct. One has bad fashion sense, and the other has those flappy little arms. I expected T Rex to say “Danger, Will Robinson!”
The T-Rex was definitely the Robbie the Robot of the Jurassic age.
Was there a pterodactyl? That was my favorite. And the triceratops.