Dinosaur Park / Park der Dinosaurier

Today we headed out of Salzburg to the grand opening of Abarena, an outdoor dinosaur park. It had been heavily advertised in the newspaper this week, and despite the ads we weren't sure if it would really be worthwhile or not -- there was great potential for it to be totally tacky. Along the lines of the book and movie Jurassic Park, Abarena features fifty life-size dinosaurs! The only difference between the story and Abarena is that these dinosaurs are not real, although it's easy to imagine what it would be like if they really were.

A somewhat strange combination of dinosaur park and adventure playground, it was just right for Nikolas. At first he was a bit wary of the dinosaurs until he came to believe that they weren't going to suddenly come to life and chase after him (because they were really big and had really big teeth and claws!). We checked out the dinosaurs and spent a lot of time playing on the climbing wall and "sideways swings" and climbing structure with slide. It was somewhat surreal to be in this amazingly beautiful location surrounded by mountains in what could have been just another terrific Austrian playground but wasn't because everywhere you went there were dinosaurs towering over you. The two biggest hits were a sand area where you could dig and brush away the sand to uncover "fossilized" dinosaur bones set into the ground and a raft across the pond that led you to a gruesome dinosaur attack scene!

We saw one family with a great looking dinosaur information book that they had brought with them, looking up each dinosaur as they wandered and played. There were really good informational signs at the park, but they were clustered in groups a safe distance away from the actual dinosaurs - safe if the dinosaurs had been alive and moving around in some kind of enclosure that you didn't want to get too close to for fear of getting your fingers snapped off. Perhaps they will improve on that in the future - after all, it was only opening day. After seeing these dinosaurs, I can totally understand the excitement (fictional excitement, of course) about Jurassic Park and its living museum of cloned dinosaurs. It would be really amazing to see dinosaurs in action!