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Dinosaur Drive-Thru brings life-size animatronic dinos to Chandler

“We’re not like Australian dinosaur wranglers… we’re nerds,” said Jim Wojda, creative director of Dinosaur Drive-Thru.
Credit: 12 News

CHANDLER, Ariz. — If you’re looking for something fun to do this weekend, now’s your chance to experience a prehistoric safari with life-size T-Rexs and Raptors!  

For the first time, the ultimate traveling dinosaur experience, the Dinosaur Drive-Thru, is in Chandler. It’s a family-friendly, COVID-safe activity, millions of years in the making.  

When you pull up to the Dinosaur Drive-Thru gate at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, you can expect to see 60 life-sized museum-quality, animatronic dinosaurs. If you’re lucky, you might even see one roaming in the wild.

“We’re not like Australian dinosaur wranglers… we’re nerds,” said Jim Wojda, creative director of Dinosaur Drive-Thru. “We saw this stuff and the more that we saw kids and adults light up, we just got really into it.”  

The T-Rex is one of his favorites. 

“We put extra sub woofers underneath there, so you feel it in your chest when it roars,” he said. 

The experience has 27 different scenes with 3,000 feet of dinosaurs. 

Credit: 12 News

“They all move, they all have speakers with their own different specific sounds... and they’re all in chronological order, so it really teaches you about, not only the different periods, but also fun facts about dinosaurs,” said Wojdyla. 

He said if you’ve seen the movie Jurassic Park, you’ll notice the movies change the way the dinosaurs look quite a bit.  

“Little Velociraptors are actually about the size of turkeys and they were covered in feathers and just cool facts that you get,” he said. “At night, the light show adds a little bit more realism.”  

There’s also a trivia game you can play throughout the 45-minute tour.  

Visitors are asked to stay in their cars during the drive thru experience, so it’s COVID-friendly. It’s also contactless, so everyone feels safe at all levels. 

If you want to get in on the fun, doors open at 10 a.m. every day now through Nov. 29. Tickets are $49 per car, which includes up to eight people. For more information, go to: https://www.dinosaurdrivethru.com/

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