The dinosaurs at the Calgary Zoo have been refurbished to support a new herd of animatronic dinosaurs in March 2015. Drumheller's DinoArts Association has arranged to obtain the Zoo's Prehistoric Park dinos.
Dinosaurs destined for the Drumheller Valley are getting a new lease on life as part of a new display at the Calgary Zoo.
The Calgary Zoo unveiled its master plan last year and that vision did not include the Prehistoric Park. At that time, the local DinoArts Society arranged a home for the dinosaurs in the valley.
Much has changed since April 2013, most notably the flood in Calgary 2 months later in June.
“The flood upset a few plans along the way, but as part of the master plan, we did announce we would be closing down Prehistoric Park. Since we are a few years away from doing that and the rest of the park looks so good after all the work after the flood, we wanted to spruce up that area of the park too,” said Larissa Mark of the Calgary Zoo.
Enter the animatronic dinosaurs.
Last week the zoo announced it would be bringing back the mechanical dinosaurs that mimic the movement and behaviour of the prehistoric beasts, in March 2015.
“We gave the park a makeover, repainted some of our existing dinosaurs and decided to bring back the animatronic dinosaurs,” said Mark.
In 2010, the zoo featured “Dinosaurs Alive” and based on that success saw the opportunity to do it again.
“Guests will be exposed to an enhanced experience of our Prehistoric Park – we’ve taken what everyone loved about the area and made it better,” says Roz Freeman, Special Events Advisor. “We’ve increased our programming space and efforts to educate our visitors on how we learn about dinosaurs and the role they played in the Alberta Badlands.”
Dinosaurs Unearthed, a Vancouver–based company will be bringing them back. The new models are engineered it to move in a true to nature fashion and all will vocalize.
In the spring of 2013, when the 20-year master plan was announced, the DinoArts Committee in Drumheller had the foresight to enquire about the models in prehistoric park and found agreement that the dinosaurs could make the valley a retirement home.
Mark says the decision to refurbish the existing prehistoric park to host the animatronic dinosaurs does not affect that agreement.
“It is still going to be a few years before Prehistoric Park is phased out, anything that we are doing now would not impact any decision that we made at that time,” she said.
There is no concrete time line.
“Our master plan is living, breathing documents so things could change any time. The flood did impact some timelines, but the master plan is our plan for the next 20 years, but we have not set any timelines because of things like funding and other factors we need to take into account.”
