I had the pleasure of working the Walking With Dinosaurs show last week at Thompson Boling Arena here in Knoxville. The crew and I spent nearly 8 hours preparing the floor, stage, lighting, audio and video. As we unloaded the dinosaurs from the trucks, I marvelled at how life-like they were. I had expected decent quality but this was outstanding. From Velociraptors to a flying Pterodactyl to Tyrannosaurus Rex, all dinosaurs were life-size and extremely realistic in appearance, movement and sound and I was thoroughly entertained the entire show.
There were multiple skits featuring different dinosuars. A life-size Brachiosaurus swung its neck out over the crowd, T-Rex (and even a baby T-Rex) roared ferociously and Raptors fed on a fallen dinosaur. Even the herbivore show was entertaining as the arena floor seemed to come alive with exotic flowers and trees. They have an excellent light show although it interferred with some of my picture taking at times. The entire show is narrated by an informative speaker who stands on the arena floor and in humorous fashion sometimes runs when the dinosaurs get too close.
These dinosuars have extremely realistic legs which move and give the appearance of the dinosaur walking or running. However, since I got to see the them before the show, I saw there is a long narrow capsule with wheels sitting on the ground between the dinosaur's legs. This appeared to me to be a "cage" of sorts (think dune buggy, or a stripped down race car cage) and there is actually someone (they must be VERY small) that sits in this enclosure and "drives" the dinosaur around. Of course the cage has an outer covering that hides the driver from the public view. Pretty wild, huh! From your seats you would never guess this to be the case.
If you get a chance to see this show, I recommend you do! You will be thoroughly entertained in this exciting, informative and sometimes humorous show. Here are some photos I took from the show. You may view all the photos taken by clicking the link to the album under any photo.
