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Perhaps the most frightening thing about Ancient Exploration Park isn't T-Rex.
It's the animatronic giraffe.
Seriously. Scary.
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Beijing's largest dinosaur park, which recently opened inside Shijingshan Amusement Park, becomes a hot destination for families with kids. Jiang Dong / China Daily |
The robotic rendering of the towering mammal is odd not only in its residency in Beijing's biggest - or any - dinosaur park.
What makes this giraffe bloodcurdling is that it has demon eyes and screeches like a newborn human. Oh, and its tongue flickers up and down independently from its head that jerks from side to side.
Truly terrifying.
That said, Beijing's largest dinosaur park, which opened inside Shijingshan Amusement Park on May 21, is a great place for kids.
Pint-sized paleontologists roam among robo dinos.
There are curious cameos by creatures that came later - elk and, of course, pandas.
Others are entirely mythical - two-headed firedrakes and golden cherubim teetering atop of fish.
The Boonie Bears and hunter of the namesake Chinese cartoon series fit both bills.
A robotic dragon toy sold at a stand slithers as it blasts music and flashes lights only to pause to meow and then say "Hello? Hello?" in English. (Apparently, it's a girl.)
It's a microcosm of Ancient Exploration's schizo charm.
Indeed, the dino park is more fantastical than factual.
But that doesn't make it any less fun.
Perhaps all the more.
It compels less imagination to envision the actual Mesozoic than a time when Stegosaurs plodded around grinning trees.
Yes, ents seem perfectly plausible here.
And while it may not be educational in the sense of being a destination for kids to bone-up on rock-solid fossil facts, it's amusing.
And that sends a lesson in itself - dinosaurs are fun.
Over 60 roam the 20,000-square-meter park.
Visitors enter through a black-lit cave that dribbles with stalactites, stalagmites and columns.
Fossilized skulls peek from the rocky walls. Eggs are piled in nests tucked in corners. Tots hop atop triceratops for photo ops.
The sound of trickling water comes courtesy of speakers.
Outside, families snap shots of their members in a massive predator's jaws - gulp! - or popping out of eggs - crack!
The tongue of a fierce theropod serves as a slide on a playground-slash-obstacle course. Children crawl into the back of its head, which is the size of a truck, before whooshing out of its snarling jaws. It's like they're being eaten in reverse.
Tykes scuttle atop millipedes the size of Mazdas, cicadas the size of Subarus and centipedes the size of Chevys.
Kids dig in a sandpit sprinkled with colorful balls in the shadow of a brachiosaur. A mist machine sighs an aerosol that tints the scene with a sense of mystique.
In another cavern, children strap on virtual-reality goggles and buckle into spinning space pods to man joysticks in a shoot-em-up game in which they defend themselves from truly terrible lizards.
Outside, a less-fearsome quartet of prehistoric reptiles plays musical instruments - true harmony among species, even carnivores and herbivores.
Nearby, plesiosaurs bob in lakes and spit water. Oviraptors snatch eggs. Tyrannosaurs do what they do best - roar and have puny arms.
They're still not as scary as the creepy giraffe.
erik_nilsson@chinadaily.com.cn
