It might sound a bit clunky, but it works. It seems that there is a crewman to drive each creature around the stage in a cleverly disguised golf cart-type contraption, with the legs moving on pedals, while the head, arms and tail are controlled remotely. Most of the animatronic models are on wheels, with a mist of dry ice helping mask the technicians working underneath. But the main attraction is, of course, the hydraulic heavies themselves. With their rippling skin, snorting nostrils and blinking eyes, the dinosaurs are extremely realistic. The lighting, the sound effects, the John Williams-esque score and an involving stage set make for eye-candy on a grand scale. It’s a masterfully put-together production. Some other species are too massive to feature in their adult form, and are represented by babies – which, to be fair, are large enough as it is. Meanwhile, overhead, an ornithocheirus – a pterosaur rather than a dinosaur, as my fellow nerds will know – hovers in front of a video screen displaying its dizzying flight path. Presented in the round, there’s plenty of room for the slo-mo monster mashes that make up much of proceedings.Ī stegosaurus swings its spiked tail, an ankylosaurus comes on like a tank on legs, and a vicious liliensternus reminds us where the writers of Frasier may have got the name for Dr Crane’s ice queen ex-wife. Whether you’re a kid, a kid at heart or a budding palaeontologist, the opportunity to have a tyrannosaurus rex roar in your face from just a few feet away is too awesome to pass up.Īnd so, the Odyssey is packed with dino-fans of all ages, screaming, cheering, laughing at the occasionally corny dialogue and waving those glow-stick things they always sell at arena shows as each specimen lumbers onto a stage set framed by gaping jaws. Yes, the arena spectacular Walking with Dinosaurs has stomped into Belfast for the weekend, with its monstrous menagerie of life-size beasts. Now it’s time to see the prehistoric behemoths in the flesh.

Generation after generation has lapped up the books, the movies, the model kits and the museum exhibits. Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? I for one was obsessed as a child with the giant reptiles that ruled Earth for 170 million years.

Ankylosaurus walking with dinosaurs