Walking With Dinosaurs

Gordon Barr, Evening Chronicle

I WAS a big fan of the BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs.

So when a trip to New York to see the new live version was offered to me, it wasn’t exactly a hard decision to make.

Why, though, I wondered, were the organisers so eager to pull out the stops to fly journalists over the Atlantic simply to see what amounts to a 90- minute animatronic production?

Within 10 minutes of taking my seat and the lights going down, my question was answered, and it was easy to see where the tens of millions of pounds ploughed into it have gone.

In the no-expense-spared beast of a show, dinosaurs are once again in control – at least in the confines of arenas.

WWD takes us through the dinosaurs’ evolution and from the moment one of our dinos cracks out of an egg we are transported into an experience the likes of which we have never seen before. The dinos just keep getting bigger, more lifelike and more enthralling.

True, there are other animatronic themed shows out there, but nothing on the same scale as this.

Within minutes you forget there are men inside the dinosaurs and that the larger animals are being controlled by state-of-the-art technology.

There are 10 species to marvel at as we are taken through the millions of years the dinosaurs roamed the earth to their extinction. They roar, they come up close and personal and the use of a human narrator on the floor with them puts their hugeness into perspective.

It’s a show for young and old alike and never veers towards the schmaltzy. While entertaining, it is also educational and, incredibly, there is an element of humour too.

WWD has the wow factor written all over it, and it is easy to see why it has done such huge business in Australia and the USA.

One of a kind, it has already set the benchmark for others to follow and will leave you amazed, educated and most probably slightly lost for words. We cynical hacks couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards.