The Experience
Introduction
T-Rex Family Coaster is a 2022 Mack Rides Powered Coaster at Djurs Sommerland. This is the signature attraction at the "Dinosaur Land" area that the park opened in 2022. It's yet another low-thrill family coaster and honestly, we're not really sure how we feel about this addition.
Queue the Jurassic Park Score
The new themed area that the ride is located in is themed to dinosaurs, mostly around the art of excavation and the history of dinosaurs, but T-Rex Family Coaster is the one ride that actually features classic dinosaur animatronics and they are honestly quite impressive. However, we can't help but to feel they could - and should - have done a lot more with this theming. It's essentially just a barren area with some big animatronics plopped in and while the are itself - and the animatronics - look nice, the immersion remains quite low and it feels a little "cheap" at points. We would have liked to see some trees, bushes or rocks to make the dinosaurs better blend in and increase the overall immersion of the area. The individual elements are nice but the overall package is quite lacking.
An Odd Choice
The uneven theming is very on-brand for this coaster. Its name "T-Rex Family Coaster" is for some reason the only coaster fully in english as "Jungle Rally" and "Thor's Hammer" is spelled identically in both danish and english, despite it being a borderline junior coaster at a danish themepark that usually has danish names for their attractions. When we heard that the park would be getting a Mack Powered coaster, we thought this could be some exciting indoor coaster or at have a long, sprawling layout and be well themed (Djurs has come a long way afterall), but this isn't quite what we got, instead, T-Rex Family Coaster is a fairly short and compact ride with that gives 2 laps around its layout. Why they went with this ride model to create this type of ride, we're not really sure but we aren't too impressed with the end result.
More of a Sauropod
When it comes to the ride experience, it would have been more appropriate to name the ride "Sauropod Family Coaster", as the ride is quite slow, especially on the first lap. In fact, it's almost comically slow at points, though it does speed up significantly entering the second lap, not that it really improves the ride that much since you're essentially stuck between either getting a slow ride, but enjoying the theming or enjoying the layout but not the theming. It seems they made the ride this way so that the first lap would be about theming, while the second lap would be about going fast (well, faster at least), but it doesn't really work that well in practice. It would have been much better to have had a longer, single-lap ride where the first half is slow and focuses on theming (perhaps enclosed?) before then speeding up in the remaining section, kind of like how "Dragen" does it at Legoland Billund, which is also a powered coaster by Mack Rides that does what T-Rex tries to do, only so much better.
Conclusion
T-Rex Family Coaster is an odd coaster and an odd addition that further strengthens the parks already strong family lineup but is very much an uneven ride that doesn't get the most out of either its theming nor layout. The Ride is smooth, has on-board audio and even gives a bit of water, from either the dinosaurs or the frisky employees, but we could think of a 100 ways they could have made a powered coaster that would have worked so much better both as a coaster and as a themed experience.
Gallery
T-Rex Family Coaster Gallery
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Strengths & Weaknesses
| Very Smooth | |
| On-board Audio & water splashing | |
| Big Dinosaurs | |
| Location is barren and boring | |
| Layout is very uninspired | |
| Doesn't get enough out of its theming or model type |
Information
NameT-Rex Family Coaster
Year2022
ParkLoading...
ManufacturerMack Rides
ModelPowered Coaster
ScaleFamily-Chill
Ride Count1
Technical Specs
Specifications
Sit DownPoweredOnboard SoundCustom
TypeSteel
Length1312,3 ft
Height25,0 ft
Speed24,9 mph
Inversions0
Duration112 sec