With less than a month left at the Franklin Institute, Jurassic World: The Exhibition will run through April 23.
The exhibit allows visitors to be immersed in the park of Jurassic World from even before the moment they enter. The first thing visitors do is take a picture pretending to escape from a dinosaur. Then, while they wait to enter the exhibit, visitors stand in a room with tv-screen “windows” and watch a video explaining the background of the park and that they are on a ferry on its way there now.
Visitors then step inside the gates of the “park.” They are greeted by animatronic dinosaurs and leafy plants. The exhibit is very in-detail and features a lot of scenery and many animatronics to really give visitors the feeling of walking through a dinosaur-filled theme park.
There are also science facts throughout the exhibit, displayed as “fun facts” on displays or said in videos of “park rangers.” The exhibit includes real dinosaur bones, one of which could be touched, and a part where visitors can compare their heights and foot sizes to those of dinosaurs.
There are different sections of the exhibit, simulating different parts of a theme park. These include the “Gentle Giants Petting Zoo,” a science lab containing props from the actual movie as well as a design-your-own dinosaur station and two dinosaur shows. The dinosaur shows, one featuring a velociraptor and the other featuring a tyrannosaurus rex (and the infamous jeep), are pretty realistic, which is actually fairly scary.
After exiting the exhibit, visitors can visit the exhibit’s shop which contains both exhibit-exclusive and general movie merchandise, as well as dinosaur memorabilia. Then, they can look at the pictures they took before entering the exhibit.
Even for people who do not consider themselves huge Jurassic World fans, the exhibit is still fun.
“I did like it,” visitor Micole Galli said. “My favorite part was the t-rex show. It was very realistic.
However, the exhibit is especially thrilling to fans of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies.
“The exhibit was great,” visitor Josh Cepeda said. “It’s a great way to geek out to your favorite movie moments from Jurassic World.”
The exhibit is very popular and has attracted many visitors in its run so far.
“On slow days like weekdays, we get 50 people an hour,” Stormy, a greeter at the exhibit, said. “On the weekends, it’s about 300 people.
To deal with the amount of visitors, employees use crowd control methods such as timers and only letting a few people in at a time.
The exhibition is open during daytime hours from 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Admission costs $33.95 for adults and $29.95 for children during daytime hours, and includes general museum admission. It is also open for evening hours from 5 p.m. – 7.pm. with tickets costing $19.95 and $14.95 for children. Evening admission does not include general admission, and is just for the exhibit.
