This week the Smallhousebigtrips family were kindly invited along to the Walking With Dinosaurs Press Day and show, held at The Arena, Birmingham.
If you haven’t heard of this show, where have you been? It has been viewed by over 9 million people in more than 250 cities around the world and this weekend it was in Birmingham. If you missed it, it is currently touring around the UK; Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham are next on the list, along with a variety of places across Europe including Russia, Stockholm and Budapest (amongst many more countries).The UK tour finishes at the end of this year (just after Christmas) in London, whilst the Europe dates continue into mid 2019. It is said to be the last chance you will get to see the £15 million live extravaganza (show) and with that in mind, I would recommend travelling and getting tickets to your closest show. I do not say things are phenomenal very often, if at all, but this show, these dinosaurs, the scenery, lighting, everything, it was beyond amazing.
One of the many bonuses of going along to the press events is the chance to get up close and personal with the people who create the event or attraction that you are going to. In this case, we had the chance to stand and chat to Tim Haines, the creator and BBC Series Producer of Walking With Dinosaurs.
He was happy to see that Matilda had come along with me and he said he felt it fantastic that young children were able to come along and experience the show. And Tim is right, You would think with loud, 39 feet, realistic dinosaurs, that young children would be scared, but during the main show that we went to, we saw babies as young as 3 months old in the audience. This show is definitely family friendly and even the youngest audience members will get a lot from it. Tim told me how each dinosaur could take 50 men nearly a year to make. The detail on the dinosaurs is something that words cannot get across, I don’t even think pictures do the dinosaurs the full justice. You need to come along and see these dinosaurs in the ‘flesh’. Tim told me he had wanted to make a dinosaur that moved naturally, not like previous made Dinosaurs that moved robotically. After meeting the dinosaurs, this was definitely achieved. I heard children in the audience asking if they were real, and as an adult it would be easy to forget they were man made too.
We met Michaela Strachan (Countryfile Presenter) and I have to admit I was a little star struck. Getting to meet one of my mums favourite TV Presenters and someone I grew up watching on the television was a bit of a surreal experience for me. Matilda had her photo taken (whilst pulling a cheeky face) with Michaela (who plays the role of Huxley the Palaeontologist in the show) and Michaelas love of what she does, shone through in her body language and discussions across the room with the various media productions.
Each large dinosaur weighs approximately 1.6 tons and the whole production takes a total of 21 trucks (each 14.5m in length) to move around. I think this gives you some incite into the huge scale of this show. Each large dinosaur takes a total of three actors to help move it and we were lucky enough to have a chance to explore the control box (a personal favourite of mine) which housed the dinosaur operators, including meeting Head Voodoo Puppeteer Amanda Maddock who showed us the lead rig which is the spine of the dinosaur and the keyboard which houses the sound effects including a dinosaur roar or a dinosaur snort.
This show is huge and the creators and directors have filled the show with so much talent and skill.
We headed along to watch the show a couple of days later and after seeing how the show worked, I was more than a little excited to watch it in full.
The Walking With Dinosaurs, The Arena Spectacular takes us through over 200 million years, back to the early Triassic Period before the first dinosaurs were created, where we see them develop and the first dinosaurs enter the stage, the Plateosaurus (Plat-ee-o-saur-us) at 26-29 feet in size and the Liliensternus (Lil-ee-en-stue-nus) at 16.5 feet in size.
Throughout the show, Huxley the Palaeontologist talks us through the different periods, how different aspects evolved, how the dinosaurs acted, responded and treated one another. All with the best animatronics and life sized dinosaurs, sound and lighting, that you have ever seen.
After the Triassic Period, we were greeted with the Jurassic Period (208 – 144 million years ago). This section saw the warm and tropical forests appear and we met my husbands favourite dinosaur, the Stegosaurus (Steg-oh-saw-us) 30 feet in size. The other dinosaurs from this period that we met on the stage included the Allosaurus (Al-oh-saw-us) a huge 39 feet in size and the Brachiosaurus (Brack-ee-oh-saw-us) at 72 feet in size. All of these dinosaurs were herbivores and survived on the lush forests.
Then we arrived in the Cretaceous Period (my favourite period where beautiful, colourful, flowering plants appeared for the first time).
We saw on the television screen the Ornithocheirus (Or-nith-oh-keer-us) with a wingspan of 40 feet, and on the stage we met Utahraptor (Yoo-tah-rap-tore) at 19.5 feet in size and the Ankylosaurus (An-kih-loh-saw-us) at 36 feet in size. We watched these dinosaurs be predators, hungry to eat other dinosaurs. Also in this period was the Tyrannosaurus Rex (Tie-ran-oh-saw-us Rex) at 39 feet, her baby and the Torosaurus (Tor-o-saw-us) at 30 feet. For those of you who read The Guardian, you will have seen Matilda in the newspaper on Friday with the shows Tyrannosaurus Rex. I think the picture portrays the sheer size of the dinosaurs in relation to a young child. And to think that these once existed on our planet, is utterly amazing. And now, on our stages too.
This is a show that you will not want to miss. Perfect for all of the family. It is 1 hour and 40 minutes in length (with a 20 minute interval) and for me, that felt like the right amount of time to keep young children sat in their seats, watching this fantastic show.
The final verdict from the four of us is a huge big thumbs up. It is going to be an experience that will forever stay in our memories.
If you have children who are dinosaur lovers and are looking for activities to do over the school holidays, you can log onto the Walking With Dinosaurs website www.dinosaurlive.com where there’s a variety of fun things to print off and do including;
- Colouring sheets
- A dinosaur fact file
- A dinosaur mask
- Guess the dinosaur game
- Dino-draw
- Dot to dot
- Wordsearch
You could also pop along to Birmingham Museum to do the Dippy Tour www.birminghammuseums.org.uk