The T-Rex at Auckland Museum

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When you have a dinosaur lover in your family, you know you have to do a road trip to see the real T-Rex skeleton as soon as it arrives at Auckland Museum. You make plans, sort out accommodation and pile two adults, two kids and two dogs into the car and go.

Along the way, all you hear about is the T-Rex. You learn more about it than you ever needed or wanted to know. You are over the T-Rex half an hour into the very long journey. But you comfort yourself with the knowledge that it will all be worth it once your six year old grandson finally sees a real dinosaur.

You arrive at the museum. It takes ages to find a carpark which doesn't please the impatient dinosaur lover in the backseat. You work out who is going to run in and out again and then sit in fresh air with the dogs (that would be me which explains the lack of photos). You fight your way through hordes of people and struggle with the heat in the museum but there it is. There is the T-Rex. You watch your grandson's face as this is the moment you are going to be so thankful you made the effort to get him there. He looks at the huge skeleton and goes "Oh." That's it. What???? You try to get more enthusiasm from him. "It looks like Night at the Museum". This clearly is not a good thing. Like so many things, reality doesn't always live up to your expectations. The T-Rex clearly didn't live up to his. I didn't like to admit I agreed with him as it looked fake. Don't ask me what I thought it was going to look like - it just looked fake.

I went back to the car at this point, leaving his mother to convince him it really was amazing and worth visiting. He had been much happier at Kelly Tarlton's.

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