It sounds an unlikely partnership – two cowboys from the Rocky Mountains, one the world’s most famous museums, a firm of robotics experts from Japan, and the artistic director for this summer’s Beijing Olympics.
But put them all together and you have the world renowned design team behind Restless Planet, the US$300 million edutainment centre within Dubai’s spectacular US$5 billion development, City of Arabia.
The members of the team were hand picked by Ilyas & Mustafa Galadari Group, the City of Arabia owners, who appointed London’s Natural History Museum as their chief advisors for Restless Planet.
Completing the line-up are Jack Rouse, one of the world’s leading visitor attraction experts; Dr. Jack Horner, scientific consultant on the three Jurassic Park movies; Kokoro Creations, the world’s leading makers of animatronic dinosaurs; and French multi-media designer Yves Pepin.
Restless Planet will be the star attraction at Mall of Arabia, one of the world’s biggest malls and a key element within City of Arabia. A combined theme park, science museum, and planetarium, it will feature the world’s largest collection of animatronic dinosaurs.
As the mall will have more than 1,400 retail outlets and Restless Planet aims to attract more than 10,000 visitors per day, brothers Ilyas and Mustafa Galadari knew they needed a team of experts to help pull in the crowds.
London’s Natural History Museum was a natural choice. One of the world’s best known and successful museums, it has a collection of over 70 million specimens, a team of 350 scientists and a long tradition of world-class science.
It will ensure the scientific accuracy of the animatronic dinosaurs, and make sure that the latest scientific findings make their way to Restless Planet.
Rouse’s company, Jack Rouse Associates, has been developing unique international entertainment projects for over two decades on behalf of clients like Universal Studios, LEGO, Paramount and Procter & Gamble.
At Restless Planet they’re creating a variety of spectacular, themed rides, including a river raft journey back to the Mesozoic era through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Rouse said today: “We’re thrilled to be working with Dr. Jack Horner, one of the most significant paleontologists of our time and the real life inspiration for the book “Jurassic Park”. Like Jack, I too am from Montana, and it’s great that two cowboys from the Rocky Mountains in the United States should be working on this wonderful project in Dubai.”
Horner discovered his first dinosaur fossil when he was eight years old, but it was his dinosaur discoveries in Montana that made him famous. He discovered the first clutches of dinosaur eggs found in North America, the first nests of baby dinosaurs found anywhere in the world, and two entirely new dinosaur species.
“In addition to his discoveries, Jack has challenged conventional thinking about dinosaurs,” said Rouse. “He has theorised that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded, travelled in flocks or herds; and were far more similar to mammals or birds than reptiles. He has again stirred up controversy in the scientific community with these beliefs, but he’s usually been right in the past. His findings will be on display at Restless Planet.”
Kokoro Creations have been manufacturing models of dinosaurs and making them increasingly active and lifelike for 30 years. Restless Planet will have more than 100 animatronic dinosaurs, and over 34 different species.
Yves Pepin, the other key member of the Restless Planet team, is the man behind events such as the Eiffel Tower Millennium Show and the 1998 World Cup
Opening and Closing ceremonies. He’s now creating one of Restless Planet’s major attractions, The Dome Show, a spectacular interpretation of the Earth’s violent
and dramatic formation.
