Discover the Dinosaurs

A dinosaur exhibit came to the convention center a few weeks ago. Discover the Dinosaurs boasted anima-tronic displays and opportunities to touch some of the replicas, as well as a slew of other super-fun activities.  I thought that this would be a good field trip for the kids, and since the exhibit opened during the day on Friday, I liked that we would be able to enjoy it without all the crowds that you would normally expect. Something I had not expected was the snow on Friday morning. It really wasn't a lot of snow or anything, but it seemed to catch the road crews by surprise because none of the rows were plowed, even by mid-morning when we left. And the drivers (who often get spooked by rain) were terrible, of course. I just don't get freaked out by that kind of stuff, though if we had a choice I would have stayed home. However, the tickets were already purchased, so we made our way (slow-ly) downtown. The convention center is practically across the street from Darren's building, and there is a very convenient covered walkway, so we had lunch with Darren before going to the exhibit- a special treat! 

Since it was Friday and the roads were "bad" there was hardly anyone there when we first arrived and there was only a small crowd when we left a few hours later (and the roads were cleared). So, I think that these things are kind of tough to rate, but I will go ahead and say that I thought that this was a good-to-great exhibit. They had about a dozen of the anima-tronic scenes, many that had controls so the kids could make the dinos move. Each scene included information about the dinos on display. The kids could touch lots of the replicas and there was a place to "dig for fossils," an inflatable maze and coloring center. There was also a scavenger hunt that had the kids finding the answers to questions about dinosaurs using info they learned from the exhibit, and upon completion they could spin a prize wheel to get trinket prizes. 

The stuff that you would expect, but that makes me pause before recommending something like this includes the price (admission for 3 with discounted tickets was nearly $40) and the activities in the exhibit that they want you to pay more for, which included several inflatables, mini-golf and "ride the dinos" (which was like a large, dino version of the old supermarket horsey rides that used to be around). In my opinion, these things should have been included in the ticket price (and going in, I knew that they wouldn't be). I opted not to buy the tickets for my kids to do these extras and instead let them pick out some dino-souvenirs, which were actually not terribly priced, as you tend to expect from these sort of things. Still, in spite of these criticisms (and the fact that the coloring center only had 4 colors of crayons), this was a good exhibit primarily because Kyrie was able to learn some things she didn't know before and my kids played dinosaur for days afterward, which is always a good sign of a positive experience.