Dinosaurs are setting up home at the NEC and EventCity next year as part of a new immersive show combining theatre, theme park fun and scientific research launches.
 
Created by the producers behind dinosaur production Walking with Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs in the Wild will take up residence at the Birmingham venue from 24 June to 24 August 2017, and then head to Manchester’s EventCity in October 2017.
 
Creative director Tim Haines produced the landmark BBC TV series – which was seen by 800m globally and producer Jill Bryant headed the spin-off arena show of the same name, which attracted eight million visitors worldwide.
 
Bryant said: “We were keen to create something new that raised the bar for live action experiences. We are confident Dinosaurs in the Wild will do just that. This is a new dinosaur experience of unparalleled reality, where visitors will encounter these animals and their world in ways they have never seen before.”
 
Ian Taylor, venue sales director, NEC Group Conventions & Exhibitions, commented: “We are really looking forward to welcoming Dinosaurs in the Wild to Birmingham next June. We are experts at helping event owners bring their shows to life and we are confident the NEC will be a great launch venue for this experience. We are also delighted our venue – which currently welcomes 2.1m visitors a year – will be the first place for families to experience dinosaurs in a way that nowhere in the world has offered before.’’
 
The show is set up so that visitors will join time-travelling scientists at a research station – TimeBase 67 – built in the Late Cretaceous period 67m years ago, where they now study real, living, dinosaurs instead of fossils.
 
Guests will get safety briefings from their guides, travel through herds of dangerous dinosaurs, watch a dinosaur autopsy, witness hatchlings emerging from eggs and come eye-to-eye with a ‘very angry’ Tyrannosaurus Rex.
 
Andy Orr, managing director at EventCity, Manchester said: ‘’We haven’t hosted a show of this kind before but we’re very excited to do so and are positive EventCity will be a great home for this experience and the start of a new chapter for the venue. It’s going to be an amazing spectacle for all the family to enjoy and we can’t wait for the people of the city and the surrounding areas to see it.”