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My kids have loved dinosaurs since they were very young. My 4 year old is the bigger dinosaur lover of the two – he can name several different dinosaurs, tell you specific details about each one and he can point them out in pictures and know which one is which and rarely makes a mistake when doing that.
We went to Dinosaur Adventure in Nashville, TN a few years ago (pre-pandemic) and we had a blast. It was held at a very large venue and the place was packed with activities for the kids as well as life-size (well, as life-size as they could work with when dealing with a building with a ceiling) dinosaurs and even I can say it was awesome looking on the inside. My kids loved it and I was excited when I saw they were coming back to Nashville again this year.
This year, the event was held at the Nashville Fair Grounds (significantly smaller than their previous venue we went to years back) and honestly, I liked that much better. On our previous visit, we had to find a parking lot in Nashville (which is almost impossible to do during the middle of the day – and find that one that is also affordable and offers a good amount of parking time) and once we finally found one, we still had close to a 25 minute walk to the venue in the dead of winter. It was a little rough! This year, however, parking was AWESOME. We were able to park at the fairgrounds and it was only a $5 parking fee for an unlimited amount of time – and about a 1 minute walk to the building itself. I was thrilled.
It takes me about an hour to get to Nashville from where I live, and traffic isn’t always predictable so we left about an hour and a half early and we were the first ones there (30 min before the event opened) so we got the closest parking spot and we got to watch them set up from our parking spot through the huge windows that we were facing. That was fun for the kids!
Kids’ tickets come with 3 activity tickets that you can use inside. Any other activities will require purchased tickets.
When you walk in, you are greeted with a huge prehistoric walkway and immediately after that comes the dinosaurs! Each dinosaur had an info panel in front of it and they moved around! Take a look:
Those are just a few of what we were able to see when we first walked in. After you make your way through the dinosaur trail, you walk into the activity area. They had Jeep rides, dinosaurs that you could “drive around,” a choice between two dinosaurs that you could climb up on and ride (think – carousel rides but just one animal by itself that moves up and down), some bounce house activity centers, a dino dig area, a cave area where you could find fossils and rocks, and more!
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I apologize for the blur – he was speeding by!Our experience took about an hour and a half. We were one of the first ones inside, so we didn’t have to wait in any long lines for any of the activities. The staff were all very friendly and helpful when I had a few questions as we walked around. I am so glad I took my kids back this year. I do think the venue was smaller due to the pandemic. The nice thing was that this year they required you to buy tickets online for specific time frames- I believe this helped to regulate how many people were in the building at a certain time together. The staff members also wore masks (I have no opinion about the masks either way but I’m sure this was a comfort measure for those who were concerned about masks being worn).
We will definitely go back next year if we get the opportunity to do so! I love making memories like this with my boys. I highly recommend you check out Dinosaur Adventure if they come to your area! They are always adding new cities to their website, so keep checking back!
If they are in your area, you can use this coupon code (usfam10) here to get a discount on your tickets.
https://hashtagboymom.family.blog/2022/01/06/our-experience-at-dinosaur-adventure-in-nashville-tn/
When I was a kid I was obsessed with a lot of things; Pokemon, Digimon, Neopets, video games, drawing, and so on. But one of my biggest obsessions was dinosaurs, I was completely enthralled with the things between the grades of "too young to go to school" and "2nd grade or something". I was so obsessed with dinosaurs that my school backpack had a giant 3D dino head coming out the back, and I used it til it eventually fell apart. As dinosaurs technically count as something educational, my Grandma was rather supportive of this interest, buying me numerous dinosaur books, all of which I still own to this day. Whenever I visited her house I would usually get some computer time, and I would dig into the latest edutainment titles she had purchased. I have fond memories with a lot of those games, but the one with the fondest memories was Dinosaur Adventure 3-D, a bit of a mixed genre educational game. Also, I don't know if it makes a difference, but I am playing and reviewing the 1999 version of this game.
Story & Gameplay
The game takes place on Paleo Island, a sort of place that God forgot about as the island is a warp in time and space that encompasses three prehistoric periods: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Basically, each third of the island belongs to one of these periods respectively, and consists of its own unique dinos, flora, and mini-games. The plot here is that an apparently evil T-Rex somehow managed to wash up on Paleo Island via some driftwood. The offending dino is never actually seen doing anything bad, and there are other predators on the island, but for some reason everyone absolutely hates this T-Rex and want him dead; guess these dinos never heard of he without sin cast the first stone. Helping you, or more accurately, the dino you're helping, is a small turquoise dinosaur (I already forget the name of his species) named Rolph. He has this grand idea of finding orphaned dinosaur eggs across the island, hatching them with special "hatching crystals", and somehow using this makeshift children's crusade to take down the baddest beast of the land. Assisting you and and Rolph is a pterodactyl named Terrance.
Before you pick what part of the island to explore or what mini-game to play, the characters will let you know where the next egg can be found, which is always just a specific period. With this knowledge you explore that period in search of the egg. This section of the game is point and click, a popular genre for edutainment games. You click around various scenes to see short dinosaur videos, learn various fun facts, and to of course, get dem eggs. This isn't a completely directionless search and find though, once you're on the right screen the game will notify you that an egg is nearby and give you some kind of educational question that relates to its location. The answers to these questions tend to be very obvious to any adult who hasn't been locked in the basement their whole life, but could give some potential "fun" challenge to a small child (the target audience here).
Once you got your egg you need three hatching crystals to hatch it. Obviously these crystals are fictional, and the game even lets you know what dinosaurs actually used to hatch their eggs. The crystals can be earned by successfully completing any of the game's numerous mini-games.
A lot of the mini-games here were actually surprisingly decent and were some good very casual fun. Almost all of the mini-games are some kind of puzzle. You have the egg matching game, which is just a dinosaur version of Mahjong Solitaire, and is one of my favorite mini-games. Another classic is a path making puzzle, you have to create a path to numerous locations using a limited amount of path tiles. The path game on the hardest difficulty was actually a bit more involved than you might expect, I actually had to retry the puzzles a few times.
The game also has some mini-games that are a bit more creative. In one you're being chased by a pack of dinosaurs alongside our T-Rex adversary. This is a simple run and dodge'em game. Its the only action mini-game here which makes it stand out, but sadly the jumps are hard to time due to the clash of 2D and 3D graphics throwing off any kind of proper depth perception. I found it easier to just avoid the obstacles altogether and to not try to parkour my way through the course.
The most interesting game though was "Predator", a sort of blind exploration game. You need to traverse a jungle to get to a lost dinosaur who needs help. You have a handful of pebbles, and each pebble gives you a random amount of steps that you can make. Hidden in the jungle are various events, these can be swinging from a vine to advance ahead, or can be a river that takes you back. The game gives you some hints on where dangerous dinosaurs are (these will impede your progress), and you have to try to traverse the jungle with your randomized amount of moves. I hated this mini-game when I was a kid, but as an adult I found it to be pretty interesting.
Sadly though, not all of the mini-games are made equal. Some of them were frustrating or boring. There is a tar pit game that I hated when I was a kid and I still hate now. Its basically a maze of a bunch of nonsense bobbing up and down in tar. You have to hop from object to object to get across, and some will force you to leap in certain directions. Its very easy to screw this up and become fossil fuel, which sets you back at the beginning. I'm fine with the challenge, but its just annoying as the game somehow always manages to make a bubble pop right before you land on it. The other game is a timed one where you put together various dinosaur skeletons; this is basically just a puzzle, like put pieces together puzzle. Its just not that interesting. Overall though, the majority of the mini-games were a lot better than I was expecting. I played this just for nostalgia sake, but I actually did have an enjoyable time playing the games here.
After you get enough crystals, which is only three, you're ready to hatch your dinosaur egg. Hatching the egg is a simple process, you just go to the special "hatching cave" and follow the directions, pretty simple stuff. The game has a decent amount of dinosaurs to hatch, but despite that this game is very much on the short side, you can play the whole thing in just a few hours. I played this game repeatedly as a kid, likely hundreds of times, but just once is fine for me now; by the end of it the games were beginning to get a bit stale.
My biggest gripe with this game though would be how slow it is to move around the game. Whenever you go anywhere, do anything, enter or complete any mini-game, Rolph feels the need to slowly give out information, often repeating himself in the process. I don't need the directions for a mini-game every single time I ever choose to visit it, and I also don't need to be repeatedly reminded that I am carrying an egg and need more crystals, like dude, I know, I'm well aware of it. Sometimes you can click through dialogue, and sometimes you can't. Seriously every movement in the game results in slow paced dialogue and some snail pace animation. In one mini-game you have to seriously watch him slowly walk off screen before it will start, and he moves about as fast as Stephen Hawking not in a wheelchair. Like I know this is for little kids and they likely never intended an adult decades later to be playing (and reviewing) it, but still, it was aggravating to deal with.
Graphics
Oh boy, where do I even begin on the graphics here. This game is the biggest hodgepodge of graphics styles that I have ever seen, its something to rival any art game, any "edgy and interesting" indie title, any stylized anything. Seriously, every component of the game has completely different graphics, and you can see several different styles any given moment. You have the very cartoon-style simple pixel animations and sprites. You have the hyper-realistic-but-clearly-fake style that was pretty common in old PC games and PS1 opening movies. You also have sort of weird 3D animated dinosaurs, who will often be right next to two dimensional dinosaurs. You also pictures that look like they were scanned from a 1990 public library and all the 90s PowerPoint marble and embossed backgrounds that you could ever dream of. I think that cartoon The Amazing World of Gumball might've stolen some ideas here, as this is the catalyst for "what the fukuiraptor is going on here" graphics. Also yes, fukuiraptors are real dinosaurs, they even have a Wikipedia page. Get some knowledge, punk.
But honestly, I was fine with this mess of an aesthetic. I have a weird fondness for dated hyper-realism, and everything else just clashed so horribly it somehow became pleasing. There are videos that you can unlock in this game (pictured right) which show brief videos of various dinosaurs. All of these videos are short, ranging between like 3 - 10 seconds (this is a guesstimate). They are honestly pretty well done, especially for their time. You can re-watch any of these videos in the "crystal theater". As there was no electricity back then the game explains that its light reflecting off of crystals onto a "viewing crystal" and you "imagine" the videos on the viewing crystal; which is quite a poetic way of saying "smoking crystal meth and staring at the ceiling for the next four hours while Animal Planet's Prehistoric Park plays in the other room".
Also, the baby dinosaurs were quite ugly and were not lovable at all.
Educational Value
This is an edutainment game, so its educational value is quite important. I honestly think we're long past the days of edutainment games and I don't care how many ABC Mouse commercials air on TV; I'm not buying it, and neither is anyone else. If you gave your kid this game, they would likely TikTok doing a Fortnite dance over Justin Bieber (who is somehow still a thing) while they cry from your abuse of forcing them to play a 90s dinosaur game. The only kids that would think this was fun would be those kids who live in a purposely "tiny home" with their single divorced mother in the middle of Wyoming not near anything and have no idea what a smartphone is. All that said though, this game is educational, but perhaps not as much as you would like.
Basically, the educational content in this game largely consists of fun facts. If you've ever flipped through a book that says something like "1001 Real Facts!" at the Walgreens pharmacy, then that is about what you're going to get here. A lot of it simple fun facts, like stating how large a dinosaur was or how tiny its brain is. Its a lot of simple fun facts that don't really cement themselves into your mind. There is some more serious education here, such as explaining how oxygen comes from plants, and information about the various time periods. Something really cool though is that it doesn't strictly focus on the mainstream dinosaurs, its going to show you tons of obscure dinosaurs with very complicated names, and that is quite cool. This game also has a printable activity book which can only be accessed through running a specific .exe in the game disk's files, and its hidden in a folder as well. This stuff is basically the random activity pages that are in coloring books, and all the pages also double as coloring pages and they're simple black and white line art. Only a very small child would like these, but it is available and a pleasant bonus. There was another .exe that looked like it was possibly some kind of test software but it refused to run.
Also, it goes without saying, but the research of dinosaurs is a science, and what science commonly believes changes overtime. I personally think "all dinosaurs had feathers" is a bunch of hogwash, and the game seems to think this too. They mention that some scientists believe it, but then follows that up with a joke dismissing the theory to "being for the birds". Also, they showed a dinosaur literally just run past a rock and grab a lizard with its hand, and like, I'm sorry, but I don't think ANY dinosaur has EVER grabbed a lizard like it was cooled down hot pocket.
Sound & Music
The game is fully voiced, the style is like any cartoon in the 90s that was trying to be 90s era Disney but wasn't actually 90s era Disney. Its not just cartoonish, but is dated cartoonish; it dated the game more; and this game is already more carbon dated than carbon itself. That said though, the voice acting was good for what they were going for and the time period.
Something that did impress me though was the music and sound effects. The music was mostly just various tracks of downtempo music that kind of gives the sense of being on an island with dinosaurs, but the dinosaurs aren't dangerous; its hard to describe but it was enjoyable. The Predator mini-game has a much darker vibe than the rest of the game and has a surprisingly good dark ambient track that was on par with something like Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement. Additionally, the sound design in this mini-game was insanely good. Tons of scary dinosaur screeches that actually sounded quite frightening, was brilliantly done. Sadly though, the other sound effects in the game aren't as impressive, decent stuff, nothing bad, but just not as astounding as they are in Predator.
Functionality
This is a PC game from the 90s, and PC gaming can sometimes be a fickle thing. This game did run on Windows 10, but that said, I did have to randomly reinstall it as the game suddenly stopped recognizing its own disk. I simply just reinstalled it without uninstalling it, this fixed the issue and kept my save data intact. Obviously, everyone's computers can be different, so please be aware that you take on the risk of this not working properly, or not at all, if you plan to play this on a more recent version of Windows.
Overall
Overall, this was a surprisingly decent game, especially for an edutainment title. Its pretty clear to me that the developers here actually cared about what they were making and wanted to give the kids of the 90s and actually enjoyable edutainment game that wasn't just clip art spitting out math problems and your ABCs. Dinosaurs are a fun theme, and the game consists of real mini-games that provide some easy and casual fun. Yeah its very dated, and does have a lot of things that can (and should) be made fun of, but its a surprisingly good edutainment title that stood the test of time.
All that said though, I still don't really suggest anyone purchase this, its an edutainment game, there is much better and exciting things to play. A good edutainment game is still nothing compared to a good game of literally any other genre. I can only really recommend this to people who grew up with the game and want some nostalgia, or people who are edutainment game enthusiasts (which I know has to be a thing). Also, I will admit my rating is a bit higher due to nostalgia; this is just unavoidable, I can't erase the human experience with 9,001 ego deaths for a review about a dinosaur named Rolph.
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