Don’t Miss Dinosaurs Revealed at Kansas City’s Union Station

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I’d like to thank @visitkc for sponsoring our visit to Dinosaurs Revealed: Journey Across America. As always, all opinions are our own.

UPDATE: Dinosaurs Revealed is scheduled to remain until at least mid-March 2019!

When the temperatures soar outside, we start looking for attractions that are indoors and cool. When we saw that Union Station in Kansas City would be offering a dinosaur exhibit, we knew it would be cool in all senses of the word. We planned a few days in Kansas City, and Dinosaurs Revealed: Journey Across America was at the top of our itinerary.

To stay close to the action, we made reservations at the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center. If your room faces downtown Kansas City, you will also be able to see Union Station. This is actually the ideal place to stay because you can walk to several attractions, and Union Station is accessible via the air-conditioned skywalk from the hotel. We could even see Union Station from our room at night. During our stay, the lighting changed from patriotic for the Fourth to green for Dinosaurs Revealed.

You can also check out a moving T-Rex outside on the corner day or night.

If you’re not familiar with Kansas City, Union Station is a historic train depot of the past.  The building now hosts an Amtrack station along with restaurants and attractions.  The building itself is beautiful and is worth a visit even if you don’t plan to see any of the attractions.

As you make your way down to Dinosaurs Revealed, be sure to look around.  You never know what you may see in the nooks and crannies.

We arrived early on the day we decided to visit to try to beat any crowds.  We also opted for a weekday.  The exhibit was busy, but not overly crowded.  Once we had our tickets, we queued up to see a short film before we entered the actual exhibit.  The guide at the queue informed us that this is the premiere showing of Dinosaurs Revealed, so I assume the exhibit will move on to other cities after January 2019.

After the short film, we entered an area with some dinosaur skulls.

Though you aren’t allowed to touch the animatronic dinosaurs and other displays, Dinosaurs Revealed has plenty of hands-on activities for kids that are clearly marked that touching is encouraged, including this sand area showing elevation by color.  As you moved the sand into different elevations, the colors changed.

The exhibit focuses on dinosaurs in North America during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.  The dinosaurs are divided by period.  This guy is popular in the first section.

The dinosaurs do move and make noise, so use your judgment when bringing your child.  Ours went through a “scared of T-Rex Cafe” stage.

We had fun looking at all of the dinosaurs and checking out the other displays.

You can see skeletons along with animatronic sculptures.

The animatronic sculptures are pretty fun!

The dinosaur dig area is popular with the kids.  Who doesn’t want to dig for dinosaur bones?

Kristin also gave it a try.

The last room had some of the most familiar dinosaurs.

You can’t have animatronic dinosaurs without a T-Rex!

Of course, there’s a gift shop at the end, so be prepared!

They do have a lot of cute stuffed dinos.

And a great photo op spot where you can be inside a dinosaur!

We had a great time, and Kristin said it was her favorite attraction we visited in Kansas City.  We walked through it once, and then we returned to parts we wanted to see again.  If you have a dinosaur-lover in your family, you should definitely check this out!