Yesterday, on the 9th anniversary of the moon being blasted out of Earth’s orbit, we celebrated by attending Walking with Dinosaurs, the Live Experience.
This is a multi-million dollar extravaganza (the production, not – quite – the ticket price) to bring life-sized dinosaurs from the Walking with Dinosaurs series to life, on stage.
No matter how many books you read, the scale of these creatures is difficult to imagine. Even the fossilized bones and reconstructions in natural history museums don’t fully convey their scale because they are hollow frameworks.
And so I’ve been eagerly anticipating this show since I first heard of it.
It didn’t disappoint.
Seeing a full-sized brachiasaur walk onto stage is humbling. That we were 14 rows back in a steep sports arena and that it’s head still towered over us really drive home how magnificent these beasts must have been.
Of course the technology could not completely make these “real”. The monstrous beasts were supported on sled-like mechansms that allowed them to be driven without interfereing with the simulated motion of the legs.
The smaller, more agile creatures were performers in suits. This presents an interesting problem as human legs articulate in a reverse fashion from theropod dinosaurs.
Clearly this was a stage production, but an impressive one.
I even shed a tear when the tyrannosaur family was wiped out by the commet.
