You can’t usually touch museum exhibits, but the touring show Jurassic Quest offers visitors the chance to actually touch replicas of dinosaurs.
This interactive tour includes animatronic dinosaurs that you can pet, train and even ride.
Adrian Palmer is called a certified Dinosaur Trainer and has been traveling with Jurassic Quest for a year now as part of the performance team.
“We interact with the crowd. The crowd gets them to do tricks, and at the end they’re certified dinosaur trainers,” Palmer said.
There are three baby animatronic dinosaurs that are interactive and handled by staff, and two Utahraptors that folks can train. These were meat-eaters with lots of sharp teeth that could run very fast and ambush prey. But Palmer said these two, Diego and Jojo, will not actually eat guests.
“They are a little bit tricksters sometimes, they sometimes like to break out of their little pen,” Palmer said, “But trust me guys, they’re trained, they’re friendly, you don’t need to freak out if you see them running around, they’re just trying to say hi to everybody,”
The Jurassic Quest team works with paleontologists to ensure their life-sized animatronics are as accurate as possible.
The exhibit will also have museum-grade fossils and casts, and guests are encouraged to dig for fossils at the science tables.
Jurassic Quest also has sensory hours for families who have children with noise and light sensitivity on Saturday 8-9 a.m.
Admission prices range from $25 to $85, which has caused some social media influencers to offer some critical reviews. The event will be open Nov. 21-23 at the Albuquerque Convention Center.
