Folks walking onto the Mosaic Place floor this past weekend didn’t have to wait long to get their first idea of what was in store during their tour of the Jurassic Quest exhibition.
A 20-foot-tall spinosaurus stood sentinel front and centre of the entrance, lording over dinosaurs of all sizes and setting the stage for a walkthrough to remember.
Children of all ages looked on with awe, reverence and yes, even some fear, at the giants from millions of years ago as they roared, moved around and once in a while even looked a bit dangerous.
And that was just the hockey arena.
The curling rink side featured tons of entertainment, including a show that detailed all you needed to know about training a velociraptor, huge bouncy castles, a paleontology dig and even the chance to get on the back of one of the ‘terrible lizards’ if you were brave enough.
“It’s amazing, there’s lots of people and the dinosaurs are really cool, they’re kind of my thing,” said Wyatt, 10, shortly after snapping a few photos inside a giant cracked egg found in the curling rink area.
Some of the most popular stops for the show included an actual baby dinosaur you could walk up and pet and find out all sorts of cool things about from its handler, a Jurassic Park-style crawl-through bouncy castle that had huge lines all day, and, of course, the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex pen in the dinosaur area.
“It looks pretty scary,” said Crystal, 9. “I wouldn’t want to get eaten by it!”
Of course, there was also a huge education portion to things, with Jurassic Quest handlers like Prehistoric Nick offering loads of information at an exhibit of dinosaur fossils and Safari Sarah tending to the littler dinos and answering all sorts of questions.
The popularity of the show certainly wasn’t hurt by the fact dinosaurs are a bit of a thing at the moment, what with the opening of Jurassic Park: Dominion in theatres this weekend.
And yes, kids were looking forward to that, too.
“I’m going to go see the movie tomorrow, I think it’s going to be good,” said Curtis, 11, who added that the fossils were one of his favourite parts of the exhibition.
Tickets are still available for Sunday’s show, and you can pick them up in advance by visiting www.jurassicquest.ca/upcoming-events.
