Well, actually, the farthest thing from muppets in the general puppet space; Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience. I took the 8 year old and the 6 year old to see the show this afternoon and, suffice it to say, these are the biggest, hulking, loudest puppets you are ever going to see. No wonder it had to be an arena spectacular.
I must admit that having watched the BBC TV show, I kinda knew how this was going to all turn out; so it was a little slow in places. The dinosaurs were also a bit slow moving for my part; being a child of Jurassic Park. It was also short on carnage. Basically, the dinosaurs themselves must be pretty darn expensive and also probably much more fragile than their real world inspiration. They would roar (or chirp) alot at each other rather than chow down. To be sure, a baby dinosaur was plucked live from its egg and later on some raptors feasted on a pre-killed dinosaur but I was left wondering how the carnivores survived for 165 million years.
The show stealer was the T-rex (both mother and child) and, for those of you who watched Jurassic Park and thought that it would have been a going proposition without carnivores, the crowd reaction I saw would be massive evidence to the contrary. But in the end, despite being accurately life size, they were smaller than my children imagined and so this all had a coming down to earth feel. They were also notably puppets and so there was no foolin' anyone. Nothing truely scary here. I believe the 2 year old would have enjoyed the experience to. Most kids will love it as mine did.
If you go to one of these shows, try and get seats closer to ground level. We were above the dinosaurs. I think looking up at them would have been the way to go. Also, if they could make these things more robust, it would be more fun to actually walk with the dinosaurs. The only person doing that was the narrator and I, for one, kept hoping one of the dinosaurs would grab him; just to liven things up.
I must admit that having watched the BBC TV show, I kinda knew how this was going to all turn out; so it was a little slow in places. The dinosaurs were also a bit slow moving for my part; being a child of Jurassic Park. It was also short on carnage. Basically, the dinosaurs themselves must be pretty darn expensive and also probably much more fragile than their real world inspiration. They would roar (or chirp) alot at each other rather than chow down. To be sure, a baby dinosaur was plucked live from its egg and later on some raptors feasted on a pre-killed dinosaur but I was left wondering how the carnivores survived for 165 million years.
The show stealer was the T-rex (both mother and child) and, for those of you who watched Jurassic Park and thought that it would have been a going proposition without carnivores, the crowd reaction I saw would be massive evidence to the contrary. But in the end, despite being accurately life size, they were smaller than my children imagined and so this all had a coming down to earth feel. They were also notably puppets and so there was no foolin' anyone. Nothing truely scary here. I believe the 2 year old would have enjoyed the experience to. Most kids will love it as mine did.
If you go to one of these shows, try and get seats closer to ground level. We were above the dinosaurs. I think looking up at them would have been the way to go. Also, if they could make these things more robust, it would be more fun to actually walk with the dinosaurs. The only person doing that was the narrator and I, for one, kept hoping one of the dinosaurs would grab him; just to liven things up.
