TR: Dinoquest 5/31/07

Rastuso · June 16, 2007

This day was always meant to be a rest between two really long days at Disneyland. It became quite necessary since my son was getting worse, and his doctor wouldn't prescribe an antibiotic over the phone. Luckily, a family friend would. At first I didn't think we'd do anything, but he really wanted to do Dino Quest after I had mentioned it to him yesterday. He did seem better after lunch at Denny's, so we headed to the science center about 2 miles South of DL. I had found online that the folks that made MagiQuest in Myrtle Beach had put in a small installation here themed to dinosaurs. There were also lots of hands on science experiments including a huge pin wall where you could get the impression of your whole body on it. They had a neat tornado too.

But, we were there for what was behind the center, Dino Quest. Here, you don't have to buy wands, you get one to use after paying the $5 upcharge. It is the exact wand used at MagiQuest, they even have MQ on them. The story is that you are helping scientists find out more about dinosaurs. Each quest involves something like identification, predator/prey, or different ways animals evolve to help them survive. You pick up a sheet that lists the information for each task, showing pictures of what you're looking for and providing clues on where to find them. Most were fossils and such imbedded in the walls around the area, but some were parts of the statues, including the very large ones. When you found the items and pointed the wand at them, you'd be told you found it. Then, after collecting everything you went to the specific uplink station to send the information to the certain scientist in charge who would award you with a fossil. There were two main adventures that required 4 or 5 fossils to play.

Since there were very few folks there, we easily did all 6 quests, although we did need some help on a few. One lady and her daughters were a few quests behind us and kept asking me for help. My son did a great job figuring out some of the clues that I didn't. The first adventure was training a baby triceratops animatron. Even after earning the fossils, you had to collect things to help train it. We found food, medicine, and some spare parts that we needed to repair some equipment so we could finish the training. The final adventure was capturing a T-rex. This also involved finding some tools first, including food, the biggest net we could find, and some tranquilizer darts. We found two, and the scientist said that might be enough. Well, it wasn't, and we had to find the very difficult 3rd dart that was in an obvious place that no one looked at. The first worker that was there was very helpful in giving us clues to find things we couldn't find, but one guy was pretty clueless.

Just like at MagiQuest, if you had all the right things for the major encounter, the gem outside (latern in this case) would light green, not red, when you pointed your wand at it. The T-rex battle was pretty tough and we couldn't get it started at first. You really had to jab the wand toward the screen for it to register. After luring the T-rex into our trap, we shot him with 3 darts and captured him. This whole ordeal occurred down in a cave in front of a large projector screen, just like the major battles at MagiQuest. It was pretty cool, but was the only major encounter for Dino Quest.

After successfully doing everything, we got wooden coins for each fossil recovered and silicon bands for dino training and dino tracking. There were very few wrist bands there, so there must not be many kids that complete everything. Even though my son was coughing quite a bit, he loved the whole experience. I can't wait for us to hit MagiQuest down at Myrtle Beach some day, maybe once Hard Rock Park opens.