Weli Cultural Alliance are touring the UK with ‘Ice Age: The Lost Kingdom’ and we were kindly invited along to the preview of the fascinating outdoor attraction for families before it opened its doors to the general public on Saturday 6th April 2019 at the beautiful Birmingham Botanical Gardens.
The new attraction which combines education with entertainment brings 40 life size majestic beasts from 70,000 years ago, to life, using animatronics. There’s noise, movement and lots of information regarding each of the prehistoric creatures.
It is on at Birmingham Botanical Gardens until 28th April 2019 with tickets online coming up a little bit cheaper than paying on the door. A family ticket for 2 adults and 2 children (or 1 adult and 3 children) is £42 online and £48 on the door. Children under 2 are FREE and no ticket is required for them.
The event is open from 10am to 6pm with the last entry at 5pm. Entry is hourly and visitors must arrive within the hour entry time that they have chosen.
After Birmingham the tour is heading to Norfolk Heritage Park in Sheffield (18th May – 2nd June), Glasgow (22nd June – 14th July), Manchester (27th July – 11th August), Nottingham (24th August – 8th September) and Leeds (19th October – 3rd November).
The SmallHouseBigTrips Review of the event:
We arrived after school and headed straight to the Ice Age entrance where the girls ran through the tunnel filled with pretend ice cubes and a variety of sound effects. Matilda was really excited whilst Jemima at first was apprehensive about the sounds,so held her ears.
Once through the tunnels we were greeted with an open area (under a large canopy) where there were a number of VR (Virtual Reality) computer systems. We didn’t have a go but were told about the exciting 9d experiences that the machines give people. There’s the Dawn of the Dinosaur Valley, Jurrasic Coaster (a 9d virtual reality roller-coaster experience) and the Big Pendulum (if you’re a Drayton Manor fan, it’s a maelstrom type VR ride).
Once we had moved from this section we headed into the Botanical Gardens to start our animatronic outdoor Ice Age experience.
I don’t want to spoil it all for you, but my girls had some very firm favourites.
Matilda and her dad absolutely LOVED the Woolly Mammoth, a large herbivorous mammal which ranged Africa, Europe and North America. He is incredibly large, furry and makes quite an impressive noise. That we all thought was fantastic… Except Jemima who held her ears and told him to be quieter. Haha.
Jemimas favourite section was found within the scarecrow field which is the main caveman scene. This was a great section for Jemima where she asked lots of questions regarding the cavemen.
Matilda enjoyed dancing next to one of the cavemen on the main lawns.
My favourite Ice Age creature was the Diprotodon. The largest known marsupial to have ever existed. He would inhabit forests, woodlands and grasslands surviving on a diet of leaves, shrubs and grasses. Just look at him. He is like a giant rat!
Both girls (and us too!) loved that the whole of the gardens were open to look around.
Matilda loved stopping to smell the plants and flowers and both girls loved that they could run freely through the grounds with us.
They were both also able to play in the fantastic adventure playground that is within the Botanical Gardens (whilst also being able to see more Ice Age beasts) .
For more details and pictures about the grounds of the gardens, check out a previous review that we did here: https://www.smallhousebigtrips.co.uk/birmingham-botanical-gardens/
The new Ice Age experience is fantastic and a perfect day out. You could spend as long or as little as you would like there. Take a picnic if the weather is good and picnic amongst the Ice Age creatures on the green. You could also visit one of the many street food and drink vendors which had some mouth watering dishes on the menu. We didn’t get to see them open but just reading some of the menus got me salivating. Mostly the Simply Duck stand. Here’s a couple of pictures of what stands were offering. There’s many more around the park though.
There churros on one of the stands menu too – always a winner for me. It’s good to see that the street food vendors can accept card payments too. And they can offer cash back. At least this was by the duck stand, so he definitely can.
And if it’s raining or you just fancy eating indoors, there are the Botanical Gardens Tea Rooms for something a bit more fancy.
There were a couple of things not yet set up when we visited but they sound great so I wanted to let you know about them.
There’s the Ice Age Excavation Pit where children get the chance to learn and play at being mini Palaeontologists by climbing into the fossil excavation pit and unearthing the skeleton of an Ice Age Beast.
Somewhere along the route you will also find an Education Marquee Mini Cinema for school groups and families to enter and watch educational documentaries about the Ice Age period on a large projection screen.
We all had a brilliant time and enjoyed learning about the Ice Age era.
Nb: If you are a Botanical Gardens Membership Holder, you can enter the Gardens for no additional fee.
Disclaimer: We were invited along to the press launch before it opened to the public so we could see what the event is going to be like and share our honest review with you. We all give it a big thumbs up.