Dinosaur Land

Yes, it’s silly and old and kitschy. But I LOVE IT. It’s such a cool place! I’ve lived in the area for over a decade and finally got to go back in the late summer. The giftshop is cool and has some really nice dinosaur and fantasy creature figurines. The dinos are awesome! Some really need a bit of new paint, but there is something unnerving walking through the darkened doorway that warns of dinosaurs and being greeted with giant statues. The photo opportunity is amazing! You can reenact the raptor taming scene from Jurassic World. Who could pass that up? Plus, these kinds of places are few and far between now a days. It’s a valuable piece of American roadside history.

I stopped at Dinosaur Land on my way to Skyline Drive, and was really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I love offbeat roadside attractions, and Dinosaur Land did not disappoint.
The only reason I’m not rating this higher, is because it wasn’t until after I had been through the entire experience that I saw the confederate flags available for sale in the gift shop. Granted, it is Virginia. But can’t a grown man see a bunch of dinosaur sculptures without being subjected to an overly-​proud southern agenda??? A’hem. I mean «tradition», of course. But there was definitely a moment where I regretted giving them my $ 6 for admission, and so I didn’t bother with any souvenirs.

This place is decrepit, contains racist memorabilia and is less bang for you buck.
HOWEVER…
It’s one of those places that you have to visit just for the awkward and interesting experience. And the photos. Take awesome photos. That’s kinda the point of this whole place anyways– to show your friends on FB that you’re having way more fun than they are. Or at least looking like you are.

I’m not sure why this place is still open. The entire store is what use to be a home and had been added onto several times.
Imagine every grandmother in America having a yard sale and this is what you’ve got to look through complete with odd smell.
Dinosaur land should be an open park for people to enjoy the shade not a paid walk through poorly formed dinosaur figures that have suffered weather damage over the years.
Ignoring the rebel flags, scientific inaccuracies and oddly specific hunting gear this place would be better suited with park benches, picnic tables, a sandwich truck and free entry to eat among the «dinosaurs».

Yes this is a silly kitschy slice of Americana that, situated on Stonewall Jackson highway, comes with some of that old ingrained American racism. Check out the gift shop for confederate flag magnets and statues of black «folk» in traditional roles. Collect the whole minstrel set!!! Then stop at a Bojangles for lunch to complete your tour of old odd weird white America.

Yes, it’s about as corny as an old Godzilla movie but my family and I enjoyed every second of our visit. Stop by, enjoy the shady walking path and learn a thing or two about dinosaurs. Don’t forget to shop for souvenirs. They are reasonably priced and adorable!

I’ll never go back to Dinosaur Land ever again.
After leaving repeated messages for the owner about renting out the space for an event (read: Dinosaur themed Wedding), the owner finally returned my phone calls. The conversation went as follows:
«Hello, this is **** from Dinosaur Land, is this *****?»
«Why yes this is!» (excitedly awaiting pricing information)
«Well — you keep calling me, so I figured I’d call you back. We don’t do Weddings and we don’t do birthday parties»
*Click*
If you want to see fantastically awful dioramas of dinosaurs — go right ahead in. I won’t support this lack of customer service though. The owner was rude and frankly, doesn’t deserve the business.

Best place ever!
I am giant kid, nerd at that. Loved this mini-​park. It was such a fun place to stop for an hour or so. The gift shop is HUGE! You will spend at leaf 30 minutes just seeming everything it has to offer.
Perfect stop for bored kids on a road trip. Enjoy!

We went to Dinosaur Land expecting your typical tacky roadside tourist trap (in fact, hoping for that level of campiness), and this place delivered in spades! From the giant shark with a door in the gills (so you can climb inside and get the photo op in his mouth, of course) to the giant King Kong smack in the middle of the property, Dinosaur Land is a shrine to 1960s kitsch. The park follows more or less a set path with several dozen stations along the way. Each station features a (roughly) life-​size foam dinosaur (or several) with signs at each explaining when the animal lived and what its life was believed to have been like. In addition, there is a huge king cobra and a praying mantis, both scaled up to match the dinosaurs in size. The dinosaur sculptures are showing signs of wear (they’re 50 years old and outdoors, after all), but again, this is not only something you expect at a place like this, but you almost want to find it that way. Like any self-​respecting roadside attraction, you enter and exit through the gift shop. There you’ll find pretty much every bit of tacky souvenir geegaw you can think of, from shirts and shot glasses specific to Dinosaur Land to those rubber-​tipped «Cherokee» spears you see for sale in every truck stop. If you show up expecting genuine quality, you may find the $ 6.00 per person ($ 5.00 for kids) a little steep. But if you go in knowing exactly what to expect, you’ll find Dinosaur Land well worth the money.

I have been going here since 1979 and it was fabulous. It is a bit run down now but since the expansion of 522 it doesn’t get the big crowds any more. No tourist no money for repairs. I still go so does my family. The kids can run around on actual dirt, rocks, gravel and climb real trees and fiber glass dinosaurs. I love the rugged terrain. None of that sissy shredded tire cushions, plastic swings and neon plastic «jungle gyms ». If you love dinosaurs, fantastically inexpensive gifts and some a little bit more. My last visit I purchased a piece of Fenton glass I have not seen any where else except in magazines. In 2001 my husband proposed to me in king kongs hand. If 6 dollars is to much for you to pay then you should stay home until your financial situation is not in the negative. It is 1950s road side attraction to see for sure, like the mighty dinosaurs these sites will all be extinct some day. Visit while you can. I love it.

Kitsch is the word for this bizarre little roadside attraction. Our family of 3 went yesterday, and we adults got a huge kick out of the scientific inaccuracies, the odd proportions, and the run-​down oddities. If you love photography/​photo ops, go, sit in King Kong’s hand, take pictures under giant tentacles and hanging out of a shark’s mouth. The gift shop has an extensive collection of stones, home brewing equipment, Virginia, Native American, and dinosaur memorabilia. If you don’t have a great sense of humor, skip it — if you do, or if you just love quirk, GO.

I’m glad I just brought my son and 1 year old so it only cost us $ 11. This place may have been really neat at one point but the statues are old and poorly maintained. They were cracked, had holes, and faded paint. I was afraid my 1 year old was going to get cut or have something fall into his eyes if he touched one. Also, there are a lot of tree roots. That isn’t a big deal if they would take a leaf blower to the leaves. We tripped a few times.

Great place for kids who are into dinosaurs. Good admission price and great displays. A great value for the money

Silly, kitschy, roadside attraction fun with giant amateur dinosaur sculptures. This is a great photo-​op stop if you are going to Skyline Drive or Luray Caverns. It’s a little run down, but that’s part of the fun.

Totally not worth the 6 bucks per person. Those people who said it was interesting for adults totally lied! Well, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they have fun no matter where they’re at, but for the rest of us, it was totally «one star» awful.
Dinosaur land gets an extra star because we had a six year old with us and she loved running around telling made up stories about dinos killing each other. The only thing it killed for us was an hour. Bleh.

So much fun! We had such a blast running around snapping pics with the big bad dinosaurs! Worth the trip and the price!

Great place for kids and masters of plaster. At $ 6.oo per person, with cheater admission for kids, Dinosaur Land provides ametuer paleontologists a change to chill with thunder lizards.
It’s pretty easy to get to with fair amount of parking. Don’t make my mistake and come in the later afternoon when it’s hotter that Jesus Jones in the early 90’s.
Also there’s a ton of niknak crap to be purchased in a gift shop that is as nearly as large as the park itself, where you can find genuine Native American Indian artifacts made by genuine Native American Koreans.
Come for King Kong, stay for octopus, only at Dinosaur Land

The park is deceptively large. It looks much smaller than what it is. It’s a great place to take kids of all ages.
They are a little pricey but the kids love it.

My girlfriend & I went to Dinosaur Land while staying in Front Royal, VA and had a really fun time. Though obviously targeted towards kids, we (and all the adults there) both enjoyed exploring the place quite a bit.
The Dinosaurs appear to be constructed out of paper mache like material, but are very personable in appearance & characteristically designed.
The layout of the place is also convenient, easily allowing you to loop around and venture into different areas of the park at will. In terms of overall size, it’s not too big-​you can view each Dinosaur/​description in about 45minutes, but it allows for tons of excellent photo opps (King Kong is great!)
The entry price was reasonable (6 $ adult /​5 $ kids) and the gift shop also has more than enough toys & trinkets to keep you occupied after leaving the park.
I also enjoyed the informative descriptions & histories of the different Dinosaurs; You can actually learn, rather than just guess which ones were in Jurassic Park.
All in all I’d say this is a surprisingly fun place to visit for adults, and an even better place to bring the young ones!

Like Jesse C., I’m a sucker for road-​side attractions. It goes way back in time — to when we used to make road trips from Michigan down to visit my grandparents in Florida — traveling down the I-​95 corridor — and collecting brochures at all the rest areas about all of the road side attractions/​tourist traps.
The time to visit Dinosaur Land is during warmer weather. The gift shop is winding down for the year — and a number of products are not available as they get ready to button down for the winter. Still, Dinosaurs are cool — and I was endlessly entertained by Dinosaurs as a little kid!
Check this place out!