A Dino-mite Night
By erin on August 27, 2010 | Filed Under events
It was a late night for the kiddos last night. But one of those special ones they’ll remember for a long time, so well worth all the next day grumpiness.
The family took in the opening night of Walking With Dinosaurs at the (newly renamed) Rogers Arena.
It was, to quote the seven year old “absolutely amazing”.
This “live” theatre show includes ten large electronic motorized dinos, five suit dinosaurs and two baby dinosaur puppets – To quote our four year old, ‘the big ones were robots but the little ones were real!’ Little being relative, they’re all ‘lifesize’, which means the largest; the Brachiosaurus is a staggering 36 feet tall and 56 feet long, and even the baby T-Rex is 7 feet tall and 14 feet long.
It takes 24 microprocessors, 15 hydraulic rams, 6 hydraulic motors and three people to operate one of the large dinosaurs – the result is quite fantastic with very natural movements and reactions. When our youngest waved at the very cute Brachiosaurus it swung its head around to give him a second look.
The narrator, ‘Huxley the Paleontologist’, tells the tale of the dinosaurs from the Triassic through Cretaceous period. Our four year old didn’t always follow the narrative but there was so much going on visually, with dramatic music, thunder and lightening thrown in, that he was never bored. Although the comets and flashing lights finale seemed a little random to him without the benefit of the verbal lead-in.
For him it was just the right type of scary – enough to make sitting on dad’s lap (with the ritual burying of face in the shoulder and peaking out with one eye at the most dramatic bits) the best place to be, but not scary enough that it took away a smidgen from the thrill.
And it wasn’t the four year old who nearly hopped out of his seat when the T-Rex turned and roared at the family from six feet away…
But the producers did a great job of balancing out the scary with humour; big fierce Mama T-Rex was accompanied by Baby T-Rex who roared whenever his mama did. And Baby “had a very, very funny roar.”
We got lucky and scored prime seats in the first available row (6th row in the world of hockey, is just barely out of tail swinging distance at this dino-spectacle), but everything is on the grand scale so you’d get quite the panoramic view from the nosebleeds.
It was a little cool so dress them in long sleeves or bring sweatshirts, but if you’ve got a dino lover at home it would be well worth catching one of Walking with Dinosaurs’ six shows running through Sunday (August 29th) at Rogers Arena (yes, daytime shows on the weekend!). My guess is they’ll be talking about it for a long time.
