Das Praehistorium

Today we surprised the kids with a trip to a local dinosaur museum called Das Praehistorium.  We'd heard good things about it, and we were not disappointed.  It was a really rainy day, and this was just the place to take our  minds off the rain.

Fossils in the sidewalk leading up to the entrance.  There were footprints too.

We got our tickets (Davin is free until he turns four  woot woot!) and then went to the starting point.

The whole adventure starts with a 13 minute 3D movie.  The whole thing is in German, and we were issued devices to translate exhibits, but not the movies.  Too bad.  It was basically a movie about the creation of Earth, when life showed up. (complete with swimming sperm!  Nope  not kidding.  Lots of giggles from everyone when they showed up!)  Then it went through Evolution, and a meteor  hitting the Earth destroying the dinosaurs.  It was a really great little film, and the kids enjoyed it even though they couldn't understand what was being said.  I was so excited when I could pick up and understand little phrases here and there. Yay for German classes!

After the film we walked through the different displays which the kids didn't care about at all.  Until they saw that a lot of them had puzzles, and models you could put together.  They would stop and work on a couple of them, but then they wanted to move on.  I like that you can touch things here, it's very interactive.

It's not an aquarium, but a room with lighting that makes it feel like you are under water.  There was a screen with a movie clip of prehistoric ocean animals swimming around.  The kids thought it was cool

Then we walked into a room that takes you back in time.  It was really like walking into a prehistoric forest, the mist, smells, sounds, it was great!  This is where we started to see the animatronic animals, and bugs.

Throughout the areas we found fossils and dinosaur skeletons on display.  Since we weren't able to really sit and read/listen to each display I was never sure if they were real, or just replicated dino bones.

Our next stop was into a canyon area.  We were promised that if we waited patiently, every 8 minutes they had a flash flood.... we waited.  It was awesome!  If you stand up front you get wet, we were in the back, and I got some great video of the flood.

This dino was on the ledge of the flood area, moving, and growling at us all.  Tayzia didn't like him too much.

We made our way into a cold and wintery place.  It was chillier in here, and of course not really snowy, but they sure gave it the right ambiance with the lighting and temperature change!

These little fellas were huddling and breathing in their snowy escape.  Tayzia loved that they were breathing and not dead.

One of the scarier exhibits.  Tayzia and Davin were scared.  It was a moving T-Rex who would look at us, roar loudly, then keep eating the triceratops.  Pretty awesome.


After this we got to go to another 3D movie about ocean life.  Again, all in German, but full of silly voices and animals.  Not too scary, but there were some giant shark like creatures that would jump out of the water and eat fish.  It was fun.

Then we made it to the Time machine.  We had to walk to a portal, wait until the attendant told us it was safe, then go through into our space ship.

It took us back to the conquistadors

the dark ages

Ancient Egypt

Cavemen time

The ice age

After these displays we walked into a dark cave and ushered into a room where an awesome animatronic  dinosaur play was put on.  There were big brontosaurus, babies just hatching from their eggs, a Velociraptor that came and ate some of the babies, then a T-Rex that chased the raptor away.  It was pretty cool what they could do with those dinosaurs!  The kids loved it.  Tim heard Davin say to Corben when the scary dino came "Corben, get your gun, shoot it!".

After that show, we were ushered to the gift shop, and assumed we were finished with the museum, but there was one last show.  A 4D movie.  We were put in a room (a submarine) and when the show started we were underwater chasing a Megaladon.  Eventually it got wise to what we were doing and started to attack, which caused the room to shake.  Pretty soon the glass widows were cracked, and we were sprayed with water.  Rylissa did NOT like this one.  Poor girl left the room in tears.  We will definitely go back there!  Overall, we had a great time, and while we may not have "learned" much we sure did have a lot of fun.