Dinosaurs Alive! Natural "Living" History Museum

Many of these animatronics are programmed to "breathe,"
making them appear more like living specimens.

For those who don't know, the King's Island amusement park has an outdoor animatronic dinosaur park known as Dinosaurs Alive! I don't normally like animatronics--they're creepy--but these ones were rather incredible. While a lot of the visuals are based on speculation (inevitably), the park's determination to base the design, including size, as much as possible on leading scientific research, as well as by providing supplementary information (such as feeding habits, location, and whether they were solitary or pack animals) based on the same, makes this dinosaur park more than just a form of entertainment. I believe that this qualifies as a natural history exhibit.

Where it stands out, however, is that it attempts to also become a sort of "living" history exhibit by making the dinosaurs appear as lifelike as possible. While this illusion was often broken for me because they dress the dinosaurs up during Halloween Haunt, the exhibit really gives visitors a scope of size for these creatures. Plus, the dinosaurs not only move (as the research guessed they might have in life), but they are programmed to emulate breathing and sometimes utter calls and other sounds. As a bonus, some are interactive and will move different body parts based on buttons visitors push. While it may sound hokey (and in some ways it is), Dinosaurs Alive! is not a bad place to legitimately learn about dinosaurs. There's just enough immersion to really bring home the point that these creatures actually existed outside of textbooks and fossil records. There's just enough there to help you understand a bit more about these creatures and for a moment to understand that they really were...alive.