Discovery Cube, Orange County
On May 25th, 2024, the all-new, bigger, bolder, more thrilling reimagined Dino Quest opened at The Discovery Cube in Santa Ana, CA. “With so much to explore we can’t wait to welcome back our paleontologists-in-training to Dino Quest this summer. This project is $6M and five years in the making, and it’s pretty spectacular!” shared Joe Adams, CEO of Discovery Cube, prior to the opening.
Beaudry Interactive was thrilled to partner with The Discovery Cube on this monumental endeavor. The original Dino Quest exhibition opened in early 2000 and was powered by MagiQuest, a wand-based system guests would use to trigger interactive moments. MagiQuest was decommissioned prior to 2020 and the entire exhibition zone was eventually closed. Our challenge was not to simply refresh and rebuild the Dino Quest exhibit, but to truly re-imagine it, including everything from creating a new logo and brand identity, to designing the overall game experience, and developing innovative ways to deliver the exhibit's key learning objectives. Our team collaborated closely with the Cube team and its other partners—including legendary paleontologist, Jack Horner—to meet these challenges.
Now guests can explore the new exhibition grounds as part of four unique interactive games that guide them through a high-tech/low-tech scavenger hunt to discover fossils, bones, artifacts, and more. Each stop along the way provides the player with a fun, educational fact about what they’ve just found.
To bring this edutainment experience to life, our team produced a custom “Dino Tracker”. Designed to look like a paleontologist’s actual field instrument, this device utilizes a variety of embedded technologies which allows guests to be in control of their own prehistoric adventure.
Although there are commercial wayfinding devices available for museum experiences, none checked all the boxes required for this experience. Instead, our technology team designed, prototyped, and produced over 200 devices that contained exactly the right combination of hardware. Much attention was devoted to creating a clean, frictionless physical and digital user experience with the handheld. This includes bright, colorful and succinct graphical material, a simple three-button interface on the tracker, and a haptic motor to provide physical feedback at just the right gameplay moments. Artwork on the face of the tracker, designed by our visual design department, was created to mimic an actual field instrument to enhance the story for our junior paleontologists.
As guests arrive to this outdoor exhibit space, they are welcomed into the Field Office where they can pick up their Dino Tracker and meet our host, Tyra Digwell. Bespoke capacitive buttons with embedded LEDs provide a direct connection to Tyra to give mission overviews from the field via a large tablet-themed monitor. As she describes each mission, artifacts and dinosaurs magically appear in her display case using a Hypervsn 3D holographic display.
When guests are ready, they scan to select their mission at the Mission Hub and they are off to explore an amazing built environment, complete with a very hungry animatronic T-Rex. At each stop guests are prompted to scan graphics panels to unlock their next challenge on the Dino Tracker. After being presented with key factoids about what they are observing, guests are quizzed on what they’ve learned.
To provide even more ways to play and learn, guests can explore additional challenges (WOW Moments). These include interactive games showing how paleontologists set up grid systems at dig sites for fossil exploration, as well as how Fossil Jackets are used in the field and tools needed to open the jackets once they’ve returned to safe environments. Once the fossil is correctly identified, they’re treated to a visit from their found dinosaur though immersive projection, sound, and lighting.
Keeping everything humming along in the backend is Diva®, Beaudry Interactive’s award-winning show control system. Diva continuously monitors system health, orchestrates startups and shutdowns, and even reboots problematic hardware when needed, providing a long-term, painless solution for operations.
Beaudry Interactive is extremely proud of this achievement! We love providing guests the ability to control their own experience while also educating and entertaining. We hope that you’ll visit Dino Quest at The Discovery Cube to experience this epic prehistoric adventure for yourself.
Video courtesy of the Califoreigners Family Blog.
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