How Walking With Dinosaurs keeps up with the latest science

If you thought Jurassic Park in the cinema was scary, then imagine a life-sized, one-and-a-half-ton, 36ft-tall T-rex with razor-sharp teeth charging towards your seat in a darkened arena bellowing like a banshee. Or there’s the leading lady, who is 23ft tall and almost twice as long, with 6in teeth and a palpable lust for blood. These are mama and papa T-rex, the stars of the £15 million Walking With Dinosaurs show, which is touring the UK from next month.

The dinosaur queen is part of a parade of animatronic dinosaurs that could hardly be more awe-inspiring. Here, in an arena spectacular inspired by the Bafta-winning BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs, are 18 full-sized dinos, clasping their claws, blowing smoke, roaring and pulling fronds from treetops, laying eggs, nuzzling their young and squaring up to each other. The carnivorous allosaurus even gets to eat a lizard…

The gargantuan herbivorous brachiosaurus, 36ft tall and 56ft long, is another scene-stealer, along with T-rex’s Baby-T, who is just a fifth that size. Both are a fantastic combination of thrilling theme-park monster and scientifically researched, palaeontology-based rebuild. It took more than a year to create the show, with a team of 60 at work on the beasts.

Eye can see you: ‘People are drawn to the eye of an animal,’ says creature designer Sonny Tilders. ‘They long to see its soul. So each eye has a lens and a cornea embedded with gold leaf to make it reflective. Although the eye, with its upper and lower lids, is only the size of a cup and saucer on a 50ft creature, the payoff is that it makes the dinosaur look believable.’

Too cool for stool: Tim Haines created TV’s Walking With Dinosaurs and is now consultant to the arena show. ‘We have a responsibility to present something rooted in science – and the creatures [including the utahraptor, above] are as accurate as we can make them. The only thing I can take issue with is dinosaur poo, which in this show is turned into a giant round ball that bounces around. It’s not accurate – it should slop down into a bucket. Maybe that would be too much for an arena show…’

Monster munch: ‘The allosaurus [above] is my favourite dinosaur,’ says Sonny Tilders. ‘It hits the sweet spot of being the right size, fast and dynamic. And it has cool features such as clasping claws – and it gets to eat a small lizard. Eating is one of the hardest things to do in puppetry. Think of the Cookie Monster…’

Prehistoric punk: The Liliensternus, with a spiky crest of feathers running down its back, had a sort of Triassic ‘punk rock’ look. These 16ft-long creatures were the largest meat-eaters of the time and the skull shows evidence of distinctive fin-like crests along the snout, which may have been for display to attract a mate

This summer they are joining seven other species on a new UK tour, with wildlife presenter Michaela Strachan playing the part of dinosaur expert Huxley, who guides audiences back through time. She opens the show at the dawn of the dinosaurs in the Triassic Period (245-208 million years ago), navigates her way through the Jurassic Period (208-144 million years ago), and into the Cretaceous Period (144-65 million years ago), which ended with a meteor strike and their extinction.

‘These creatures are huge,’ says Strachan. ‘And the great thing about having me on stage is that it shows their scale.’ She does have a few concerns, however: ‘They say never work with children or animals, and I think animatronic dinosaurs should be added to that. If I’m not in the right place at the right time, I’ll get run over by a brachiosaurus.’

Pumped for action: ‘Seventy-five per cent of the T-rex and the brachiosaurus [above] is inflatable,’ says Tilders. ‘It means the creatures can be packed down for the tour. When it’s let down, it looks like the dinosaur has been shrunken and mummified.’

Too close for comfort: The torosaurus (above) contains 430ft of hydraulic hose, 3,300ft of cabling, 24 microprocessors controlling movement along 15 hydraulic rams and six hydraulic motors each with 7kW of power from 12 truck batteries. It is covered with 3,000 square feet of fabric; 4,660 cubic feet of foam and 45 gallons of paint. ‘The irony,’ says Sonny Tilders, ‘is that in making these enormous things, we always run out of space inside them because the pivot for this has to be next to the pulley for that. Everything wants to be in the same space!’

Walking With Dinosaurs has a sweeping orchestral score and production values that would not shame the Las Vegas and Broadway theatres where the show’s director, Scott Farris, is more usually found. It is also historically accurate: during the 100-minute spectacle, the Earth’s continents split, volcanoes erupt and oceans are born.

And it keeps pace with emerging dinosaur science. For 2018, the upgraded animatronic creatures have fur, feathers and quills and display brighter colours, all in keeping with new evidence. ‘Even Steven Spielberg is still shy of doing that,’ says creature designer Sonny Tilders, who has worked on films including The Chronicles Of Narnia and Star Wars: The Revenge Of The Sith.

The arena spectacular has been seen by nine million people in 250 cities worldwide since its 2007 launch. Now it is set to thrill thousands more across the UK – the age of the dinosaur is upon us once again. 

‘Walking With Dinosaurs, The Arena Spectacular’ is on tour from Jul 20-Dec 27. For tickets and venues visit dinosaurlive.com