This weekend we visited Jurassic Encounter 2022 at Royal Victoria Country Park in Netley near Southampton. This is a giant travelling exhibition of some 50 dinosaurs (and a couple of non dinosaurs), touring various parts of the UK and EU countries. We visited with three of our children (the 11-year-old, the toddler, and the baby).
Upon reaching the country park if coming by car there were two car parking options rather than the larger number usually owing to the space taken up by the experience. The disabled bays were there as usual but in a disappointment to myself, non disabled people were allowed to park in them … not good enough Hampshire County Council… we need those larger spaces for a reason!
Anyhow, I digress, back to the dinosaurs.
There are around 50 dinosaurs in all, plus some non-dinosaurs ( a plesiosaurus, mosasaurus, and a dimetrodon) placed at various points around the trail. These dinosaurs and dinosaur-looking creatures are largely to scale (even if for most of them this means the size of juveniles), are often animatronic (usually within the head/neck and tail areas), and make noises science guesses is similar to their once-living counterparts.
With the exception of a couple of the smaller dinosaurs who lack some of the finesse and spectacle of the larger or more detailed ones (indeed there were issues with 2 of the dinosaurs we saw: an apatosaurus seemed to have a broken tail (it was bent near the end), and one of the smaller dinosaurs had part of its tongue missing), these are spectacular and awe-inspiring creatures, especially the larger creatures, including the iconic T-Rex and my toddler and 11 year old loved it.
There were some issues though. The first of these being the lack of any thought for those in wheelchairs who would be visiting. I have visited RVCP many a time over the last 16 years, and know the site well. It is a site that is largely relatively flat. However, the powers that be at Hampshire County Council and Jurassic Encounters failed to make best use of this for the event and instead placed the one-way path through wooded areas with steep and uneven root streamed pathways, which if you haven’t guessed yet, is not ideal for us wheelies. There was also one part that was completed inaccessible and up a large mud ridge, meaning that I in my wheelchair, wearing my baby; my special needs toddler; my husband; and my 11 year-year-old daughter, all had to struggle against the tide of people through a narrow and dirt/root strewn bottleneck to actually be able to get around that part of a site.
I feel like in 2022 we really shouldn’t be having to scream this from the rooftops anymore. Where you can, make your Sh1t accessible!!! Goddamnit! It really is in most cases simple and we shouldn’t still be having to accept being ignored or if we’re lucky, an afterthought!
The other issue was the cost of things inside the site and the fact there were no toilets on the trail (only the usual ones in the rest of the park) when it would have been quite easy to have some portaloo (including accessible portaloos) toilets in the arena space near the end of the trail (where the food trucks and additional cost activities were) or dotted around the trail. Within the end part arena we had to pay £5 for our toddler to have five minutes on the jumpers but in other parts of RVCP very similar offers were half that price.
Anyhow, enough of the bad elements, we did have a really lovely couple of hours on the trail with our toddler, older baby, and daughter and although fairly expensive, it was not much more so than a trip to the cinema and will definitely be remembered longer than the latest offering at our local multiplex.
