TacoCat’s Travels #212 (Penang): A Thrilling Encounter with Dinos! 🦕

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Hey Hive!

If you missed the last few posts, I started sharing about our short getaway to Penang Island, Malaysia, back in July 2022! It was our first trip post-covid and we decided to go on a short 3 day getaway there! It had been at least a decade since either of us have visited Penang so this was a semi-new experience for both of us.

Last week, I started sharing about our final day in Penang which we spent in their Biggest Indoor Theme Park called The Top! We bought the 3 attraction pass which includes the aquarium, which we went through in the previous post!

It was cool seeing the fishies they had, even though it was a little limited. They did make the tanks really cool with some quirky decorations including those from Spongebob and even some traditional Asian crockery!

Anyway, we still have 2 more attractions to go through, and the next one we headed to was the Jurassic Research Center!

The lobby entrance already had some dinosaur animatronics outside so we knew what to expect. But to their credit they did try to make it seem realistic with the design once we got in.

There were even announcements as we headed in just detailing the different dinosaurs there were on display, and about the fossils in each section.

It did seem a tad like we were going through a facility like the one in the original movie.

But maybe a more kid-friendly version since there were a lot more colourful pictures and diagrams of the dinosaurs just to make it more interesting.

At the time I wasn't sure if these were actual facts or if they were from the Jurassic Park movies, but apparently Sue the T. Rex is real and is one of the largest, most extensive, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever found, back in August 12, 1990, by American explorer and fossil collector Sue Hendrickson and was named after her.

There were both indoor and outdoor sections of the attraction, which made it a little warm going through because of the humid weather.

But it's cool that they tried to recreate a fossil burial ground.

Even though it did look quite fake I guess it could be interesting to the kids if they ever wanted to get into palaeontology.

After the fossil laboratory we entered the Discovery Lab which apparently houses some incubators. There were some "warnings" not to frighten the baby dinosaurs here.

It really felt like we were entering into the labs from the movies.

There were some eggs on display, and the "hatching" was of course more animatronics that looked a little janky tbh.

There was also a huge stegosaurus on display that was moving slightly. It kind of resembled those I used to see in The Land Before Time.

There were a couple more dinobators here, keeping eggs under what I assume is supposed to be heat lamps.

We came to another outdoor sections where supposedly the dinosaurs have escaped and were wreaking havoc.

Of course it was mainly just these velociraptors since the rest of the dinosaurs were herbivores.

There were also these more docile looking ones. I wish I could identify them but I only know the stegosaurus and the brachiosaurus.

There were some truly big ones though, and I think these were the ones you could see from the street below.

There were a few triceratops as well, but these dinosaurs all being outside where you could see the surrounding buildings and hear the street noise kinda ruined the immersion a little bit. But I guess that can't really be helped.

There were some of the escaped velociraptors here too.

It was curious that they put the herbivores so close to the carnivores though. It felt like the velociraptors would've just eaten the brachiosaurs if they were real.

They were indeed pretty tall though, and although they didn't move much it really felt like what we saw in the movies.

There was a little observatory you could climb in the middle of the enclosure and while that's definitely a death trap in the movies it was thankfully fine here.

While the dinosaurs didn't look that "realistic" close up, they were still pretty well done and seem to hold up even after being out in the rain and shine after so many years.

As I predicted the velociraptors did end up feasting on one of the herbivores. It was kinda gruesome to look at even though it's all fake. I think there were some sound effects of them chewing on the poor stegosaurus.

After that we went through the restricted area which is where the movies always foreshadow the escape of the T-Rex.

There were some information plaques about the velociraptors which I guess were mostly factual since the movies were also based on some scientific evidence.

And of course we came across the huge T-Rex, which didn't look that big in comparison to the buildings in the background across the street, thankfully.

There were some baby T-Rexes as well and they were all growling pretty menacingly. But look at its little baby arms!

I think they did try to recreate some of the scenes from the movies with this truck looking like it was getting chased by dinosaurs. It looked like the truck that Alan Grant drives in the OG movie.

But of course the truck turns out to be overrun with dinosaurs!

I wouldn't say the exhibit looked realistic, but just imagining it and remembering what happens in the movies together with the sound effects of all the alarm sounds and dinosaur roars I did get a little jumpy and wanted to hurry out of there.

Especially with these annoying dinosaurs; it's like pictures you can hear.

Thankfully after going through this whole outdoor section that was the end! There was some plot though with the dinosaurs escaping and the dino birds stealing some precious materials or whatnot but I guess now that we escaped it didn't matter anymore.

It was funny since immediately after that was a children's play area with some slides and a dino-themed jungle gym.

I also saw some tents here and a spare T-Rex model. I'm not sure what the tents were for though. Maybe they used to host camps here for kids?

But after we went through the kid area we ended up back at a different side of the lobby again.

There were a couple of things we didn't see here previously like a carousel; it felt like we were in a different place each time. I guess the lobby was a lot bigger than we initially thought.

There were a couple of trick mirrors to advertise for the mirror maze which was also one of the attractions there but our pass doesn't cover for that. And I wasn't interested in a mirror maze either since it seemed too easy to get spooked.

We saw a Zombie Outbreak attraction which I'm guessing is a haunted house or laser tag kinda place. But it did look pretty spooky with a side of goofiness from the front. There was also a "news report" playing continuously on the screen in front.

There was also a Dance Ok! attraction which tbh I have no idea what it entails but we just thought it was funny especially since Sean is really into DDR.

Not too far from that was a Tech Dome which I think its a Science Centre probably with a bunch of interactive exhibits demonstrating different principles and such. Seems kinda funny to have this in the same place a Zombie Outbreak but to each his own.

There was also an Ocean Explorer attraction which I think is a VR/AR ride where you go inside this submarine and I guess it "dives" into the ocean. The board says show times so it seems like one of those shows in Universal.

After that we found ourselves back in the main lobby area where we first came in.

It was past lunch time though so we went to get a snack from the food court. Unfortunately there weren't many options here other than a fried chicken shop or a noodle shop. We decided to try this place called Only Mee:

The ordering process was quite unique because you chose what noodles you wanted and drinks (if any) by taking these numbered popsicle sticks.

We weren't super hungry and tbh I wasn't confident that it would taste that good so we just decided to share a bowl.

The whole restaurant was pretty empty aside from 2 other people.

Soon our bowl of noodles arrived along with our drink.

I don't really remember what noodles it was but it looked like ban mian, which is handmade noodles with soup topped with vegetables, meat and commonly fried anchovies.

As expected it was pretty average; it didn't really taste like the ban mian that we're used to but it was still okay and at least it did fill us up a little bit.

The next place we were heading to was the observatory at The Top! But more on that next week!

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #211 (Penang): Journeying through the Seas 🐠

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