Jurassic comes to a park near you!

Friday 03 July 2015

A park full of dinosaurs has opened up in Jersey on the site that was once the home of lions.

Tamba Park is the new visitor attraction at the former Lion Park in St Mary hoping to do a roaring trade and help starving children in Africa.

The revamped site now boasts a dino trail with life-like dinosaurs, micro boats and model boat club and a sculpture garden with art that's all been hand carved by artists in Zimbabwe. You can feed the fish and the ducks and there's an adventure park for children.

Park Manager Michael Bee said: "The dinosaur trail has 16 life-sized animatronic dinosaurs and they are all sensor operated so when people walk down the trail they start moving.

"We've got a couple of T-Rexes, a Velociraptor, a Brachiosaurus, a Spinosaurus." 

But a walk in the park won't just please dinosaur lovers, it will help children in Zimbabwe who have to walk miles to school each day on empty stomachs.

Tamba Park's owner, entrepreneur Jonathan Ruff set up Ruff’s Kitchen three years ago – a charity that now feeds over 5,000 children in the country every day. He hopes the Park will help the charity grow and that by 2018, it will be feeding over 20,000 children across 30 schools in Africa.

The Park has only been open a matter of days but it's already getting five star reviews on social media and the feedback it's had is really positive.

Mr Bee said: “It couldn’t have gone any better. I put the Facebook page live on Tuesday night – by the time I woke up on Wednesday morning we had 1000 likes. We had nearly 190 people on the first day which was great as it was all through Facebook.

“We had eleven reviews yesterday, all five star and we just want to keep that momentum going.”