Dubai's Restless Planet

Screamscape linked to an article today that provides more information about the new Restless Planet Theme Park that's going into the City of Arabia in Dubai. I had never really learned much about this park before today, and having researched it I figured why not share!

The $300 million 'edutainment' park will be connected to the Mall of Arabia, which is going to be one of the world's largest shopping malls when completed. The park will be part museum, part educational facility, part theme park, and part planetarium. It will also house the world's largest collection of animatronic dinosaurs.

Part of the park will be enclosed in a giant glass dome. Here's some concept art:

And another, while we are at it:

An interesting design, eh? The park has some very big names backing its development, as well. The Natural History Museum of London will be making sure that the dinosaurs are correctly represented, Jack Rouse & Assoc. will be designing the theme park rides, and even the famous paleontologist Dr. Jack Horner (yes the character from Jurassic Park was based on him) will be part of the project.

But we're a blog that loves rides and attractions, and while details are to be announced very soon, from several articles it looks like there will be:

• The Dome Show, a spectacular interpretation of the Earth's violent and dramatic formation.
• A river raft journey from the Mesozoic era through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras.
• A heart-stopping roller coaster chase behind a pack of dromaeosaurs as they track a lumbering edmontosaurus.

The park and phase one of the Mall of Arabia has a tentative opening date of the end of 2010. It really sounds like if this is well done it could be a very awesome experience.

Here's a video of one of the dinosaurs that has been created for the park via YouTube: