A bunch of people kept telling me about DinoVerse, an immersive exhibition in Madrid. I had visited Nomad Museo Inmersivo before, so I was really not too keen on getting there for just a forty-minute video. However, I ended up finding a promo which allowed me entry for less than half price on Friday the 27^th, and I thought why not? It was not the brunt of Easter yet, so it might be worth it.

I had to work in the morning, so I booked a ticket for the museum at 17:00. I was able to catch a train around 14:20 and transfer without an issue. I walked to the museum, which I reached a bit before 16:30. The lady at reception let me through, and when I got to the immersive room, the atmosphere was rather sad: two dads, three kids – all five bored out of their minds – and myself. I caught the show half-way through the Cretaceous, and waited for it to restart until I had seen it all.

The premise is that you live in the year 2126 and you go to the past as a “time tourist” to explore from the Triassic to the meteorite impact. I can’t even complain about all the parents with little children that came to fill up the room – the exhibit was indeed aimed at them. The scientific accuracy was… slippery. Some dinosaurs’ names were wrong, some animals called dinosaurs weren’t, and the recording placed the meteorite impact and the K-Pg extinction 45 million years ago, when it would have been around 66. Also, there was a disturbing amount of herbivores killing off carnivores, which I’m sure happened sometimes, but the video showed that all predation attempts went awry, except for a few Carnotaurs snacking on carrion.

There was a bit that took the visitors under the sea, so we got to see marine reptiles and a megalodon, the latter created the biggest jump-scare as it “hit” and made it look like it almost broke the wall. At the end of the recording, the time machine is supposed to malfunction and land in 2026, where the viewer is told to stay and “watch birds” (avian dinosaurs). The whole thing was okay-ish, but I would not have missed anything had I skipped it. It was also difficult to take pictures avoiding the toddlers and having the camera focus.

I wandered the rest of the museum for a bit after I had seen the whole video and left. I was also lucky with my connections back, and since I was riding with a monthly ticket, the trip came rather cheap.