Dino Safari USA is a drive-thru dinosaur experience that is at the NC fairgrounds from February 12th-28th. We’ve seen a lot of people on the fence about buying tickets, so here’s a full review from opening night!
Enter at Fairgrounds Gate 9
To get into the Dino Safari USA event, you will enter at the fairgrounds gate 9 off of Trinity Road. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect of the traffic on opening night. I mean, were we looking at a replay of the Dix Park Nights of Lights disaster? Luckily, the fairgrounds has quite a long waiting area setup to keep cars from backing up on Trinity Road. They didn’t have to use most of it because their timed entry tickets were well done and prevented too many people from arriving at the same time. I’ll say it probably took us about 10 minutes to get fully inside the gate and see the dinosaurs.
Scan the QR Code for the audio Tour
After you enter the fairgrounds you will see signs with a QR code for you to scan with your phone. This will pull up the audio tour to play while driving through. I found this a little frustrating since I don’t have unlimited data on my phone and there was no wifi available. I was also taking pictures with my phone, so having it double as our audio for the night didn’t work so well. We don’t have a fancy bluetooth speaker system in the car that links with my phone, so when the kids got loud we really couldn’t hear the audio. I wish I had brought an AUX cable to play the sound through the car speakers. If you have a way to do that in your car you will definitely want to be prepared!
It would be nice if they had a radio station to tune into, similar to the Lake Myra Christmas lights, but I can see why they didn’t do it that way. You are able to pause and start the narration as you drive along so it correlates with the dinosaurs you are seeing. If it was just a set recording playing through the radio it wouldn’t line up with your location in the drive-thru.
You can also access the audio tour here if you’d like to preview it ahead of time.
Child Goodie Bag
We were pleasantly surprised to see that all children in the car receive a small goodie bag, which is included with admission. It contained crayons, a plastic egg, and a passport to Pangaea National Park, which is where you are visiting on your tour. The passport contained a coloring page and a scavenger hunt to complete while you drive-thru. My 6 year old enjoyed searching for the various items on our drive, but my 4 and 3 year old were just too busy staring out the window!
We were a little confused about the plastic egg, but it comes into play at the end of the tour. Basically, you have accidentally stolen a T-Rex egg and it will need to be returned before momma gets angry!
Concessions
I was also surprised to see that concessions are available during this drive-thru event. Staff will give you a menu at the entrance so you can decide if you want to purchase anything. If you do, you will take a little detour over to the concession stand to place your order. You can then continue driving through and when your food is ready they will deliver it directly to your car!
Restrooms
After the concession stand, there are a few porta-potties setup if you need to make a pit-stop. This is the only restroom available during your drive. Once you enter the dinosaur section, there is no way for you to get out of line and leave. Our drive took about an hour, so keep this in mind if you have small kids who need to go potty frequently!
Dinosaurs Galore!
As for the dinosaurs, there are a LOT of them! Your dino-loving kid will be excited to see these life size recreations of prehistoric dinosaurs right before their very eyes. The animatronic dinosaurs along the tour make sounds and move, although the movements are small and sporadic. Usually it’s just a mouth movement and head turn, although some had moving arms. It was pretty funny to see the little tiny T-rex arms moving around! 🦖 You can see a preview of what we saw at the video below.
the mighty T-rex 
triceratops 
throw your eggs at the T-rex 
cryolophosaurus 
Kentrosaurus 
Did you know some dinosaurs had feathers? 
showing us the skull of a baby dinosaur
Merchandise
At the end of your tour you will come to the merchandise stand where you can purchase additional items to commemorate your experience. I saw a lot of stuffed dinosaurs, but other than that I didn’t get a good look at what was available. Just be prepared if you want to purchase something extra!
Is it worth it?
I’ll be honest. If you have a kid who is completely obsessed with dinosaurs, then this is a great event for your family to attend. If you have been strictly quarantining at home this past year then it’s a unique, safe option to finally get out of the house and have some family fun. However, if you have been safely venturing out to other socially-distanced events over the past few months, you may be a little UNDERwhelmed, especially with the $50 price tag per car. None of my kids are huge dino-lovers, so I would prefer to only spend $20 on a drive-thru event like this. My lack of excitement may also be because we are Museum of Life and Science members, so we get to see the dinosaur exhibits there for free!
The good news is that the event operates in all weather, so if all of this rain continues it will be a good option for something to do while staying dry! It was raining while we attended, and while the car window got a little wet, it really wasn’t bad. You may have to drive through a car wash afterwards though! The driving route goes through grass and dirt, so event staff were adding gravel to the path to prevent cars from getting stuck in the mud.
If you would like to attend this event, tickets are still available for every night except for this Saturday, February 20th. I think it would be really fun to attend after sundown when the dinosaurs are lit up against the darkness of night!
