Last year, GeekDad Vincent Janoski wrote about a new traveling show produced by the BBC called "Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience". The live show is based on the six-part BBC series, Walking with Dinosaurs.
Well, nine months later and the show has finally made its way to my city for eight shows of roaring and … well … walking. The show began with the ringleader – a "paleontologist" – speaking generally about looking for bones and the fact that a lot of people didn’t think science was very cool. I couldn’t have been prouder when my six-year old son turned to me and said "I think science is really cool." Take that, paleontologist-actor guy!
There is a loose narrative that very briefly touches on events that occurred from the Triassic to the Cretaceous, but it really just serves as an opportunity to introduce the dinosaurs. And they were impressive. From blinking eyes to hide torn from battle, there was good attention to detail. The movements of the models were so realistic that it was almost enough to make you forget that you were looking at a facsimile of an extinct creature. The smaller dinosaurs are operated by a puppeteer "wearing" the dinosaur, while the larger ones are operated from a sled beneath the dinosaur.
Over the course of the show, nearly a dozen different dinosaurs took the stage: allosaurus, plateosaurus, liliensternus, brachiosaurus, iguanodon, stegosaurus, ornithocheirus, torosaurus, tyrannosaurus, ankylosaurus and utahraptor.
"Walking with Dinosaurs" is quite a showcase for the engineers and animators that created these creatures. And the show delivers – with special effect lighting, smoke and accompanying video. However, like Vincent said after attending, it’s light on science. But if you just want to be entertained, it’s great. My biggest complaint is that while it is billed as a 90 minute show, embedded in that hour and a half is a 25 minute intermission, making for a pretty short presentation, overall.
The show will be heading east this summer, before another stop in California. If you have the opportunity, it is truly a sight to see.
See a few more photos in the GeekDad Flickr pool.
