Dino Jaws

by Nisbah · August 19, 2014

Calling all Dinosaur fans in the north, head down to the Dino Jaws exhibition for a fantastic dinorific day out.

Dino Jaws

Dino Jaws is currently on exhibition in the New Dock Hall Centre in Leeds. The exhibition is linked to the Natural History Museum and they have combined to make a fantastic exhibition.

The the main attraction is a number of animatronic dinosaurs for the children to look at to showcase what dinosaurs would have looked like in “real life”. I really liked the displays and for younger children, the magic of seeing dinosaurs in the flesh was really there. They have a number of different dinosaurs which are some of the well known ones to those which the children may not know. The finale of the exhibit is the T-rex and this is executed perfectly with sounds being quite ferocious and the atmosphere is quite scary (warning that the smaller children may get scared).

The focus of this exhibition is dinosaurs and their food. The exhibition have lots of interesting facts for the children to learn about and I liked that the comparisons were things that the children could associate with and would therefore remember these facts.

Each child visiting the exhibition, will be given a booklet which has several games for the children to play and also includes a quiz that the children complete during their visit from information posted at each exhibit.

Alongside the dinosaurs, there are a number of exhibits out for the children to touch and read about. I quite liked this aspect of the exhibition as made it a lot more fun and interactive for the children. There is an interactive, digitalised dig which lets the children have a go at excavating and this actually worked really well in practice. For Raihan who was 3, he couldn’t quite make out what to but the older adventurers really enjoyed it. In addition, there is a lego (who doesn’t love lego) area to build dinos, four sand filled areas to do some “real” fossil hunting and a number of dino related stories and fact books.

The recommended age range for the exhibition is 7 plus. Having visited, I think younger children will also really enjoy the exhibit, as we went with adventurers aged 8, 5, 3 and 1 and they all had a really good time. I think each age range gets something different from the exhibition. The older ones are able to learn the facts and will enjoy the quiz aspect of it. The younger ones will be mesmerised by the exhibits and will be quite awe-struck by them. Our 3 year old was telling Doc to move away from one of the exhibits as he was so convinced that they were real and would eat him!

The exhibition is priced at £5.95 per person online and under 3s go for free. We thought the exhibition was great and lots of thought had been put into it. The location is lovely too, outside is a number of picnic tables and some open space which leads to the Royal Amouries. We think about 2-3 hours can be spent in the exhibition. We would recommend this for any dinosaur fans out there and if anyone’s got an upcoming birthday they are also offering birthday party packages! There are a number of photographers who will take photos of your group for free and upload them onto the website for you to view.