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Dino Diner:
T-Rex Opens
Last Tuesday T-Rex threw open its doors after several days of “soft
openings” via private parties (invitation only, alas), and welcomed its first
guests around 4pm on the 14th of October. I dropped by opening day, and found
things in full swing. Lines were long for the evening (50-60 minutes), but in
all fairness things moved smoothly. We waited but ten minutes for a server, and
fifteen minutes for our food. Things were a bit slower after the entree -- they
hardly came back -- but all in all, these were small complaints for opening day.
In a word, the place is like Rainforest Cafe (no surprise there; it's the same
owners), but on steroids. It's got easily as much eye candy as Rainforest Cafe;
in fact, it's got much more. There's just something photogenic about the
dinosaurs -- perhaps it helps that they use spotlights and colored lights to
illustrate the subjects?
The environment is brash, loud, and in your face. Every 20 or 30 minutes, a
meteor shower erupts in one room, dominating the aural landscape and
transforming the intriguingly blue “ice cave” room into reds and purples, often
pulsing right from inside the walls. It's loud. In fact, the whole place is
loud, making casual conversation just a touch difficult, even away from the
meteor shower.
There are five themed rooms in the facility: the Fern Forest, the Geo-Tech, the
Ice Cave, the Sequoia Room, and the Coral Reef Dining Room. The Meteor Shower
focuses on the Geo-Tech room, dominated by pterosaurs and T-Rexes, and lights
streaks across the ceiling. In the other rooms, the animals wake up and move
around a bit. All your favorite dinosaurs are here, perhaps two dozen in all.
The interesting visuals, in fact, impede service. Almost non-stop, the waiters
and busboys have to pause while people take photos, and I imagine this kind of
activity is going to continue to years to come. They seemed good-natured about
it, on this opening day at least, but will that last? Several of the main
photography spots could become potential traffic choke-points.
The rooms are interesting enough. Several of the dinos are close enough to
touch, but none of them have what I'd call lifelike movement. Many of them
become agitated during the meteor storm, but otherwise just sway back and forth.
Plus, there is something creepy about their eyeballs.
We ate in the Coral Reef, though the Ice Cave seemed to have challenging
lighting -- would it even be possible to read the menu there in the regular blue
light, let alone the red light during the meteor storm?
Service was not only decent, but themed. We were told we were “explorers” and
our server was our “guide” -- a nice attempt at theming that was heartfelt, if
not exactly convincing. No matter. The atmosphere and the theming did most of
the work, as indeed was intended.
As a restaurant, this place is roughly
analogous to Rainforest Cafe: slightly overpriced, overly loud, and pretty much
in-your-face with the theming. The food was perhaps a tiny tick ahead of
Rainforest Cafe (and behind Yak and Yeti, IMHO), but the prices were roughly in
line. Expect $18-$20 per entree, which will give you serviceable, acceptable
fare, just not anything to write home about.
They do try to pull the theming into the human interactions, in the form of our
server giving everyone a name. I was named after Dexter the Dinosaur, the
nominal mascot of the restaurant, and everyone else in my party got a name too.
While a nice touch, the food quality matters more.
At the moment, no reservations are being taken and no discounts (including the
Annual Passholder discount) are being honored. After January 1, 2009, all that
is scheduled to change. Let's hope it does! My older son quite liked the
atmosphere, and my younger son, while scared of the wooly mammoth, was in love
with the robotic dinosaurs. We'd love to come back.
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