Some might argue that if the Rolling Stones can keep touring around the world, then 15 other dinosaurs, including a brachiosaurs and stegosaurus, can reunite for their first tour of North America in almost 65 million years.
“Walking With Dinosaurs The Live Experience” is set to stomp and roar, snarl and gnash at audiences throughout the United States and Canada beginning Wednesday at The Tacoma Dome.
Don’t go thinking this show consists of any gear-grinding, metal-squeaking, neck-jolting movements fit only for a third-rate dino exhibition.
The high-tech experience is as real a deal as this human race will ever see, from the horns of the torosaurus to the stripes of the Utah raptors. Visitors leave the dinosaurs’ world feeling as if the giants were living, breathing, cooing and fighting in the venue with them.
“Any drama you can imagine, we have it,” said Bruce Mactaggart, head of Immersion Edutainment, the company bringing the show to the United States and the creator of The Live Experience.
The show is based on the award-winning BBC Television series “Walking With Dinosaurs,” which garnered six Emmy Awards and stars 15 lifesize dinosaurs. One of them is the ever-popular tyrannosaurus rex, which measures in at 20 feet. That’s nothing compared to the brachiosaurus, with its long, smooth neck, measuring in at 75 feet from nose to tail.
As they walk around, it’s difficult to think of the dinosaurs as being powered by animatronics and technical wizardry. The ease of their smooth movements, their old, wrinkled skin and their rolling, piercing eyes don’t allow onlookers to escape their life-like presence.
“Each one has a diverse sound,” Mactaggart said. “Voice boxes are actually in them.”
A paleontologist, the only actor in the show, makes for a guide who takes the audience through the birth and existence of the dinosaurs. The bigger creatures are brought to life by a team of people including two animatronics puppeteers who, from a distance, control the movements of the dinosaurs. Below the huge beasts are hidden controllers whose existence is near invisible to the eye.
Attention to detail has been such a high priority even when scientists don’t know for sure why or if something happened to specific dinosaurs.
Take the plates on the stegosaurus. They change color during the show as they might have millions of years ago due to blood flow when in a mating period or being challenged physically. Some might argue that the plates changed color, or did not, for other reasons.
“Where there isn’t information we join the dots,” said dinosaur production manager Graham Coffey.
But after six years of research and $20 million, Mactaggart and his dynamite team of creators – including Broadway veteran Scott Faris, designer Sonny Tilders and the creator and producer of the BBC series, Tim Haines – have come up with fantastic creatures, amazing in stature, that have captivated 300,000 audience members in Australia.
“It’s sensational,” said Coffey who, even after working with the dinosaurs for a long time, still is in awe of them.
No matter the size, everyone has a favorite dinosaur and that is true of some on the crew.
The star of the show for Coffey is the allosaurus from the Jurassic period.
“He’s a sleek and handsome chap or chapess,” Coffey said. “I don’t know.”
Either way, the dinosaurs are so big that only arenas can accommodate the show, which plays to two-thirds of the seating area. Because of their size, the creatures can overshadow lower seats, playing better to those up top.
A team of 50 engineers, artists, animatronics experts and skin makers took a year to build the original production in an Australian workshop big enough to house a Boeing 747.
They managed brilliantly to create screeching, thumping, swooping dinosaurs that roamed this planet for more than 200 million years before a comet slammed the Earth, finishing off the species that today still fascinates most everyone, from scientists to children.
Audiences at the Tacoma Dome can look forward to an action-packed show filled with great music and brilliant special effects as they watch the dinosaurs evolve before their eyes. They’ll experience the climate changes and natural phenomenon that helped wipe out many species in a world so far, far away that we can only imagine it … until now.
Christina Harper can be reached at harper@heraldnet.com.
All eyes are on those in the room with the dinosaurs. The life-like creatures won’t only be looking at audience members, but they have voice boxes in them too.
Two dinosaur caretakers take a break from putting a plate in the back of the stegosaurus at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center. The 15 life-size dinosaurs in the show include these three: a stegosaurus, torosaurus and brachiosaurus. Here they are shown while being assembled recently at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center.
Workers above, below and peeking inside the hole where the Torosaurus’ horn will go.
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