[Tickets gifted]
Café
Toilets
Parking at The Underfleet car park (pay per hour)
Buggy-friendly
Good wet-weather activity
Seaton, East Devon
A new, state-of-the-art attraction has opened in Seaton, Devon (July 2024) that’s an absolute must for any budding dinosaur enthusiast. Thankfully this is as close as you’re going to get to meeting the real things- an immersive experience at Jurassic Discovery with super-realistic animatronic dinosaurs, scenery and sounds, taking you on a walk through a day in the life of the dinosaurs before the fateful asteroid hit earth and changed things forever.
Visitors walk through various habitats, getting to meet a variety of dinosaurs up close and personal, (with a bit of dino poop and flesh-eating gore to make things even more believable), finishing up with a short film about how the dinosaurs became extinct. If you’re on holiday in the area and you’re taking your kids fossil hunting (and of course locals who are regular visitors to the beach); it’s well worth popping in to help build the picture of what once lived around these shores and why it’s called the Jurassic Coast.
Once through the inside route, you’re taken through to the garden which is as yet unfinished – it’s being developed to include a giant sand pit and some play structures with completion due at the end of 2025. But for now it’s already a nice place to get some fresh air, sit at a picnic table and have a go at the free trail sheet provided at reception: have a go at drawing some fossilised dino dung, see if you can answer some of the questions with facts you’ve learned along the way, and complete the word search in return for a stamp and a sticker when you leave.
Younger kids will be excited and maybe even the slightest bit nervous to see the animatronic dinos – their eyes even look straight at you and move! Realistically, younger children might race through in a flash, so you’re allowed to go around as many times as you like with no time limit. Older kids may be engaged for a bit longer reading some of the facts and info – we took about an hour including some time sat outside with a snack and our trail booklets. Definitely an interesting and different experience as a stand-alone attraction which my kids enjoyed, though you can enhance further by adding on some of the saver ticket options to make it into a full day trip. For a discounted extra fee, take the kids into the adjoining soft play (best suits up to age 8yrs ish in my opinion) – they can stay up to two hours while you refuel with a coffee from the in-house café.
But for the full-whammy day out, I think you have to travel to Jurassic Discovery by tram! Save with a joint ticket; catch a Seaton Tramway tram from Colyton Tram Station (free parking available) and get there in style. We took the tram directly to Seaton Tramway station, which is directly in front of the Jurassic Discovery attraction and soft play – very easy logistically – and it really enhanced our day out. The tram from Colyton and back again is about 30 minutes each way. I do think it is impossible not be cheerful on a tram, and that usually goes for kids too.
A great all-weather day out for kids up to around age 11 yrs. Now for an evening watching Jurassic Park, to really round off the day!
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