Dino Kingdom, Makuhari, Chiba

For all you dinosaur fans, the Dino Kingdom is currently being held at the Makuhari Messe expo hall in Makuhari, which is about a 20-30 minute train ride from Tokyo station.  Dino Kingdom boasts 22 new species of dinosaurs that were recently discovered in China.  The show will run until September 23, and its hours and prices are: 9am-5pm; ¥2,500(general), ¥1,200(elementary & middle school students).  I was able to head out to the show with my dinosaur friends last weekend and we had a pretty fun time geeking it up.

There were two highlights of the show for me.  The first, being a Disney freak, was an audio-animatronic of a newly-found species of T-Rex.

Compared to previous years, they had a good deal of dinosaur dioramas with life-sized dinosaur models on display.  I actually prefer the life-sized models over the actual fossils.

Of course, they also had fossils too, including the largest duck-billed dinosaur ever found (the taller dinosaur in the picture that is immediately below).

They had plenty of kid activities too, including design your own dino-cookie and dig for your own fossil (as shown below).

Finally, as expected, they had a large gift shop that you could not avoid (in true Disney fashion, access to the exit required passing through the giftshop).  I tried my chances with the gatcha gatcha machine, and bless the gatcha gatcha machine gods, got the coveted secret dinosaur (as shown in the advertisement).  

Getting the secret dinosaur was the second highlight of the show. The gatcha gatcha dinosaurs are a limited edition for the Dino Kingdom expo and cost 300 yen each.  I got three of them, the secret dinosaur and the two dinosaurs in the final picture.

All in all, it was a great time due to the luck with the gatcha gatcha machines, life-sized dinosaur models, fossil presentation, and children’s activities.  I give this year’s Dino Kindom five roars out of five roars.