(Trinidad Express) MovieTowne will turn 20 years old next month and the celebrations will include the opening of the first dinosaur theme park in the Caribbean.
Dino (pronounced dee-no) World – named after the pet dinosaur of lead character Fred in the classic 1960s United States animated television series The Flintstones – is expected to be unleashed on the public in the first week of the month at Carousel Park in the Port of Spain location at Invaders Bay.
Patrons will encounter more than 20 life-like dinosaurs ranging from five to 24 feet as they explore the forest, and these animatronic creatures will entertain by roaring and fighting.
Derek Chin and his team have been working assiduously on this historic (or prehistoric) project for the last couple years and MovieTowne’s founder stated: “This is my gift to all those kids and people who just love dinosaurs and history.”
“I’m so happy that, despite all the challenges, including inclement weather, we can at last see the end and hopefully the opening becomes a reality early next month.”
In addition to the spectacle of the prehistoric creatures, DinoWorld will also include dinosaur rides, photo-booths and a fully-stocked merchandise kiosk.
MovieTowne, a facility with ten state-of-the art theatres, changed the landscape of modern movie entertainment two decades ago when the Invaders Bay location became the very first multiplex cinema in the Caribbean.
This marked the beginning of the end of the old movie-going experience, which involved patrons visiting one of the numerous cinemas throughout the country for double features.
Chin has gone on to open branches over the years in San Fernando, Tobago and Chaguanas, but was forced to close the latter two years ago because of challenges related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The executive chairman completed a project ten years in the making when he debuted a MovieTowne in Guyana, the land of his birth, in March 2019.
And like the branches in T&T, the one in Georgetown also contains a shopping mall and restaurants.
DinoWorld is another example of man’s obsession with dinosaurs despite the fact that a devastating asteroid reportedly hit the planet around 66 million years ago and wiped them out after they had ruled for about 180 million years.
Jurassic Park, the first of a six-film blockbuster series about dinosaurs in a theme park, became the highest worldwide grossing movie of all time when it debuted in 1993, and it is now ranked 30th on the list – with over US$1.1 billion.
However, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the penultimate movie in the series, has gone past the original and is in 17th place with over US $1.3 billion.
Jurassic World, which came out three years before in 2015, is the 51st and final billion-dollar movie on the list.
Chin is extremely grateful, “To all my hard-working staff who spent a great deal of time to make DinoWorld come together. We look forward to continuing to develop it into a beautiful unique attraction to Trinidad and Tobago.”
