Only three days left before Ice Age roars into action

TWO exciting interactive activities for young explorers have been added to the Ice Age exhibition at Sandton Convention Centre this winter.

A 60m ice slide, coupled with a 12m snow blizzard tunnel, will join the many attractions at the event.

Rides on the slide will be at an additional cost, but the tunnel experience is included in the ticket price.

Entering the tunnel will transport visitors to a time and world one can only dream of – for some the first and only chance to experience a real snow storm, complete with actual snow and wind.

The entire Ice Age exhibition will allow visitors to travel to a world of fascinating creatures that walked the earth more than 20 000 years ago, and see carefully crafted, easy-to-understand pieces come to life in an educational, interactive display.

Edmund Beukes, marketing manager of Media24 Weekly Magazines, which is bringing the exhibition to South Africa, says: “While the displays on their own are impressive, we want to go the extra mile and leave visitors amazed and enthralled by our ‘cold’ and ‘icy’ world. We’ve invested a great deal in setting up a top-notch entertainment zone, and this large-scale ice slide and snow blizzard tunnel will make them feel they’re passing through an authentic ice-age landscape.”

Offering visitors a peek into the history of earth, the exhibition will showcase more than 45 moving life-size animals distributed across 12 scenes, and 11 smaller models in the interactive play area.

The habitats within the exhibition are covered in 14m3 of shredded foam to create a ‘snowy’ effect, and the caves and other props used to decorate these habitats took more than a year to create and build.

Each display encapsulates years of extensive research and visitors can expect to see colossal mammoths, a life-size woolly rhino, sabre-toothed cat and many other beasts, all built to scale.

The exhibition’s heaviest animal is the largest mammoth, weighing a massive 600kg.

Youngsters will have the opportunity to be archaeologists in the sandbox excavation zone where they can discover important ‘fossils’ first-hand.

A virtual aquarium has been created where they can be submersed in a large tank through digital simulation, allowing them to feel like they’re swimming alongside prehistoric species that inhabited our oceans millions of years ago.

Other activities also available at an extra cost include a photo zone where visitors can pose for a picture with a life-size sabre-toothed cat, face-painting stations, rides on glyptodons and a panda, grizzly and polar bear carousel.

Weighing in excess of 50 000kg, the display will be transported to South Africa in nine containers before being assembled.

Doors open to the public on Saturday, June 20 at 9am. The exhibition will be open for seven weeks only until August 8.

Visitors are encouraged to book their tickets early to avoid disappointment. Bookings can be made via Computicket at www.computicket.com.

Tickets cost R145 for adults and R99 for children 18 months to 18 years. A family of four (two adults and two children) will pay R435.

The exhibition will be open from 9am to 7pm Monday to Friday, and until 8pm on Saturdays and Sundays.