The baby T-Rex, one of the stars of "Walking with the Dinosaurs"

I’ve loved dinosaurs ever since I was a little kid. When I was little, stop motion special effects guru Ray Harryhausen lovingly brought dinos to life on the movie screen. 

In the 90’s, Steven Spielberg made them even more scarily realistic with computer generated dinos in “Jurrasic Park.” But that was the movies.

 Thursday night, I got to finally see dinos LIVE and in person. And man, was it cool!

Dinos have invaded downtown Indianapolis!

Through this Sunday, Conseco Fieldhouse is hosting “Walking with Dinosaurs” an arena spectacular based on the BBC television show that aired a couple years ago.

The show is about the history of the dinosaurs. But let’s get right down to it…it’s really a cool excuse to stage and showcase some remarkable engineering by creating life-size and very life-like versions of some of the coolest dinos!

The show is in two acts with a palentologist narrator that walks you through the various stages of dino life on Earth.

There is some very imaginative lighting and staging even beyond the large animatronic puppets. And those effects really help bring the dinosaur characters to life.

But the star of the show is the fearsome T-Rex. The show wisely waits till near the end to reveal him (and his baby T-Rex.) The T-Rex got the biggest and well deserved reaction of the night.

A couple weeks ago I got to meet the Baby Rex when he visited Channel 6. (You can see his close-up up above.) After that close encounter, I knew I had to see the Conseco show. WFYI, the PBS station has been airing a cool special this week on the making of the dinos used in the “Walking with the Dinosaurs” Arena Tour. Check that out. And if you can, see the show downtown. 

It was great fun for my whole family!