Sunday, September 21, 2008

Walking With Dinosaurs

This weekend, I headed up to the Save Mart Center to watch a showing of Walking With Dinosaurs. The show had been getting a lot of buzz, and I was interested in seeing how exactly it worked, so on Friday I purchased three tickets for Saturday at 11:00AM. The tickets weren't exactly cheap ($33 a pop), but who knows when I'd be able to see this show again, right? So, 10 minutes later (and $100 bucks lighter), I walked away with three glorious tickets.

The next day, I headed up to the show with my family. We got there with a couple of minutes to spare, and quickly found our seats. The show began right on time. A man walked on to the floor, and introduced himself as a paleontologist who will take us on a fantastic journey back to the time of dinosaurs (the show was, after all, initially positioned as "edutainment." More on that later). After speaking for a few minutes, the audience was introduced to the first dinosaur, the Utahraptor.

I have to admit, even I was impressed as the raptor was shown. In fact, the entire audience let out a collective gasp of amazement, followed quickly by a lot flash photography that didn't stop until the end of the show (so much for the "no pictures" rule, eh?). The raptor was life-size, as far as I could tell (it was a little tough to accurately gauge its height at the angle I was sitting), and moved with amazing fluidity. With binoculars, I was able to look at the creature's finer details. The eyes blinked, the mouth opened, and the skin looked amazingly real. Even though it was just a man in a suit (aside from the amimatronics in the head and tail), it was probably the most impressive thing there, and that's saying a lot, because the other dinosaurs were amazing as well.

After the raptors left, the host introduced some bigger dinosaurs. As far as I could tell, the following were completely animatronic. All the larger dinos had a cross-like base for support, with the legs on either side moving as they were walking. The base may look a bit intrusive at first, but after awhile you just stop noticing it and become fully immersed in the show. First up was a stegosaurus, the dinosaur with plate-like ridges along its back and a spiky tail used for defense. Other dinos that were in the show (and equally impressive) were torosaurus (obviously a very close relative to the triceratops), brachiosaurus, allosaurus, and some more, including the titular T-rex, which was saved for the finale. All of the dinos were amazingly detailed. With binoculars, you could even see cuts and scars on some of them.

Although the show is called Walking With Dinosaurs, people weren't allowed to actually, y'know, walk with them, but that's to be expected, obviously. Instead, the audience witness the dinosaurs interacting with each other in various ways, such as scavenging for food and fighting each other. The fighting was more of a suggestion than full-out conflict, but I can understand the creators not wanting to destroy the expensive animatronics.

All in all, I have to say that the show was more than worth the $30 per ticket. As I mentioned earlier, the show is definitely more entertainment than educational; the host only briefly mentioned the time periods we were in, and they mostly served as a reason to show more dinosaurs. Nevertheless, the show was immensely entertaining and brought out the little kid in me. Definitely check out the show if you get the chance. I can't recommend it enough.

Here's a quick peak to what the show looks like. Like I said, this show needs to be seen firsthand to get the full experience, so if you're interested in seeing this show at all, DO IT! It's something you'll never forget and something that a video could never do justice. This isn't my video, but I think it serves as a fair representation of just how awesome Walking With Dinosaurs really is.

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