Dino Parc Rasnov Impressions- a Journey into the Mesozoic Era

A warm, sunny weekend day in Brasov County, Romania, can represent the perfect opportunity for a short trip to the nearby town of Rasnov, where two major attractions, Dino Parc, and the RasnovCitadel, can be explored by the curious travelers. In fact, the theme park, which was inaugurated only a few years ago, lies on the side of the road leading to the top of the hill where the citadel can be found, so I had the pleasure of visiting both objectives on the same afternoon, but since I had seen the citadel before and I expected it to be unchanged, it was the visit to the park that sounded more exciting to me on that Sunday afternoon.

If I, as an adult, was curious to explore this recreation park, you can imagine how exciting it was for the children who were there on that late October afternoon to discover all its attractions and to learn more about the age of dinosaurs, and there were  plenty of things to keep them entertained: a Dino shop, a 9D cinema, playgrounds, rope walking, tree houses with small museums offering additional info on dinosaurs and creative workshops like painting, and above all, the impressive route with 50 real sized dinosaurs, which was the highlight of the trip for me.

This short adventure trail placed in the open air right in the middle of the forest allowed us to discover dinosaurs as well as other huge prehistoric creatures, such a crocodile, read additional info on those species and even admire some of them as the movements of their heads and hellish roars were reproduced.

This whole experience took my mind back in time millions of years ago, when those beats were roaming the earth freely, screaming and fighting and enjoying the hot climate and abundance of food which allowed them to thrive and be the undisputed rulers of our planet for millions of years.

Nevertheless, the replica of an asteroid which probably struck with immense power in those distant times as well as the simulation of a giant volcanic eruption, whose earthquake-like shaking we could experience for a few seconds while standing on a platform exemplified two causes which may have lead to the extinction of dinosaurs and reminded me that nothing lasts forever.

In fact, the huge reptiles and other big creatures were the ones who were more vulnerable to the climate change, massive volcanic eruptions, asteroids falling, rise of sea level and any other adverse factors that may have contributed to their demise, while smaller creatures somehow managed to survive, and the extinction of all those big species is a reminder that bigger isn’t always better. They simply didn’t possess the evolutionary tools that would allow them to adapt to the drastic changes that affected our planet at a certain time interval and they paid the ultimate price for their inadaptability.

Nevertheless, those impressive creatures of the remote past will never cease to amaze us as we discover more fascinating facts about them, and a visit to a place like Dino Parc provides us with a good opportunity to see what they were like in real size and to find out interesting things about their habits and imagine what our planet looked like at the height of their dominance. For all these reasons I think a visit to such a theme park has a significant educational value for children and adults alike and it’s definitely a place I will return to one day!

All the photos are mine.