ANALYSIS OF MOVING DINOSAURS PARKS IN EUROPE – CASE STUDY

In Poland, we can find six dinosaurs parks with moving (animatronic) models. One of these parks dominates over the rest of Europe in terms of the number of moving dinosaurs themselves.

GOAL OF THE ANALYSIS

The main goal of our research study was to identify how many parks are located in Europe and which of them have the highest number of dinosaurs, mainly moving models. The analysis results show that Poland is in the leading position among all the European countries where most exhibitions of this type are located.

METHODOLOGY OF THE ANALYSIS

Using horizontal search engines such as Google, Yandex, Seznam, and Bing, a detailed query was made to identify the amusement parks with moving dinosaurs. The following keywords were applied (in English and local languages): „parks with moving dinosaurs”, „moving dinosaur parks”, and „animatronic dinosaurs”. The results were narrowed down using boolean operators. Each park was verified in terms of the number of objects and the park area. These indicators were helpful in creating a ranking of moving dinosaurs parks in Europe. The research was made on the parks’ websites, in the internal documents of the parks (e.g., development plans), and on the social media channels through reviews of the promotional videos or maps of the parks. The Google Maps (street view) tool was also helpful because it made it possible to „visit online” a given park. Travel blogs were also included in the analysis, as well as newspaper articles. Determining the areas of the parks was possible thanks to the data from the websites and the tool with a function of measuring the plot on a map.

NUMBER OF DINOSAURS PARKS IN EUROPE

Our analysis shows that there are 82 parks with dinosaurs with at least one moving object in Europe. In terms of the number of parks, most of them are located in Great Britain (14 parks), France (9 parks), and for 6 parks in each of the following countries: Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. Among all the analysed European countries, 25 have a dinosaurs park with movable objects, and 13 countries do not have any (e.g., Finland, Norway, or Portugal). 72% of the analysed parks have 10 to 49 objects, 13.4% have 50-100 objects, and 9.6% have less than 10 objects. A few parks in Europe have more than 100 objects (4.8%).

LEADER IN EUROPE IN THE NUMBER OF MOVING DINOSAURS

Our research shows that the Polish Zatorland Amusement Park has the largest number of moving objects in Europe. The park has over 100 objects, more than half of which are dinosaurs models that move and make sounds. Some of the analysed parks have a larger number of models, but only a few models turn out to be mobile. For example, a park in France (Prehisto-Dino Park) has as many as 150 objects, but only one is moving. Another example is the German park Dinosaurierland Rügen, which presents about 125 objects, of which only 11 are moving. Other parks in the group of over 100 objects include the Dutch Dinoland, the Greek Dino Park Greece, and the Romanian Dino Parc (each has about 100 objects, but only a few moving ones). Another indicator was also included in the study, which helped identify the largest parks. We are talking about the area of the park. Our study shows that the largest park in terms of area size is Gviskudzoo, located in Denmark (65 ha), but it is worth mentioning that this area also includes the zoo area, which is in the offer in the park. The Polish Zatorland Amusement Park, with an area of 20 ha, is in second place, followed by the already mentioned French Prehisto-Dino Park and the Dutch Dino Experience Park.

The result of the analysis is the following table (TOP 20 of the moving dinosaurs parks in Europe), which is based on the number of objects and the area expressed in hectares.

RANKING OF DINOSAURS PARKS IN EUROPE, IN TERMS OF AREA AND NUMBER OF OBJECTS