Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

What an amazing place! Prehistoric vegetation, ponds, and very large dinosaurs; this place is a true treasure of London! After a leisurely stroll through the Dino area, our kids had a play in the lovely (clever) playground and sandpit. Then a picnic (on well cared for picnic benches) overlooking the ponds. Great free, healthy day.

The dinosaurs have been done up beautifully and are now listed. The landscaping around them creates a brilliant afternoon’s walk (or run if you are that way inclined). I love the maze just around the corner which will be great once the plants have grown and spread a bit. It’s a shame that the Concert stage in the pond seems to have been ‘let go’ a bit – the summer bands and fireworks were great fun and really popular a few years ago.

Dino-tastic. Shouldn’t this review be under landmarks?

Well these arn’t just giant misconstrued lizards to us here in the Palace..

Crystal Palace community is struggling with insular and regressive church groups who openly condemn homosexuality and evolution taking over our community spaces (eg: cinema).

Its good to feel places like the dinosaurs can give our hub a point of solid history to use as a tool to point towards a future for our forward thinking progessive community who actually participate in local affairs.

Now lets get that palace rebuilt.

I love this place; you literally step out of the train station, turn a corner (walk through some park) and you're at the perfect picnic location! the dinosaurs are all comicly bad, with crazy twisty necks or massive errors (signs show what they should look like). They have some picnic tables in the centre of the dino area as well. Great all round

The newly-refurbished dinosaurs are well worth a visit! Whether you have children to entertain or are just amused by their anatomical inaccuracies, this is a great place to while away an hour or so completely free of charge.

As well as giving the monsters a bit of a wash and brush-up, the park has landscaped the area around them beautifully, making it a really peaceful place to take a light stroll. A lot of wildlife makes an appearance here, including herons and all manner of other water birds.

If you want to go further afield, the whole of the park with its ruined Palace and sports arena are at your disposal. The best thing about this park is that you can make it as big or small and excursion as you like with things to see in every quarter.

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are absolutely brilliant. I loved them as a kid and I still love them now.

A couple of years ago the dinosaur area was refurbished and they were repainted and now the vegetation around them is growing back, they look scary again!

A 2.5 year old friend wasn't really bothered by them as she didn't realise they were special, but a 5 year old would probably think they were the best thing ever!

There are often ice-cream vans by both entrances on nice days.

(If you catch the train between Crystal Palace and Sydenham you can see them from the window!)

I have a vague memory of seeing these as a kid. I remember it as overgrown, with the dinosaurs half hidden in the undergrowth. If you found them you could go up and touch them. It was wonderful.

These days what you have is a series of lakes, with the paths around them partitioned off with fences. The paths would be a good place to run, if you like that sort of hard gritty surface to run on! I just realised: in a way it’s more like visiting animals in a zoo than a load of statues! It is sort of cool when you look at it like that, though sad that you can no longer go and touch them, though I suppose it has to be that way. Much of the vegetation has been cleared out, so you can easily see the ‘animals’, though it looks a little bare in patches as a result.

There’s actually not just dinosaurs. There’s several giant ancient mammals, and the way I came you get to those first. The dinosaurs are gathered around one lake. There’s many more than I remember (perhaps the others were unseen in the undergrowth), and too be honest to me it looks too crowded and spoils the magic a bit through that. The sculptures are pretty monotone in colour too.

Of course, they are no longer believed to be accurate depictions… but there are signs around with information on them, and modern drawings of what they would have looked like. I also like one place where they’ve got a waterfall (not running when I was there, which was a shame) overlooked by rock strata, which is educational too. Some of the plants are of sorts that would have been around at the time, though I think there’s work to be done on that (if you spot grass, or anything with a flower, that’s wrong for a start!)

So sort of mixed feelings, but they are still pretty fabulous. It did make me appreciate just how good my ‘local’ serpent in Stonebridge Park is: less educational maybe, but more colourful and designed for kids to clamber all over it! Crystal Palace Dinosaurs as a whole win of course. More to look at and an educational aspect. I enjoyed visiting them, and I’m sure many kids would too.

This Park is one of those places Londoners think they know about but yet are often pleasently surprised that something like this is nearby...unless they live very nearby when it is so passe that it cold be boring.

Very unique, large park, with the orginal site of the Crystal Palace exhibtion hall that burnt down (backdrop for the Chemical brother's Sutting sun video), the national sports centre where there is often something going on. The Paintball UK Championships take place here for example, along with the big athletics meetings in London and it has a railway station sort of next to and under it. Oh and a cool maze!

Then there is the dinosours which are HUGE and pretty cool. The backdrop is pretty and it is something for big kids, tourists on a budget and those with kids. Don't forget your frisbee...lots of room to run around and play here just outside the dinosaur park!

This Dinosaur Park, part of South London's Crytal Palace Park, was a huge surprise for me. When a friend of mine encouraged me to go and take a walk around the lake I didn't expect at all what I found there. First it seemed liked any other park than I saw the dinosaurs, huge reptiles in life size. This park has got a history. The dinosaurs were the first life sized replicas of the prehistoric reptiles ever built. They date back from the 1850s. The statues were recently restored. They seem so real. I felt like I was entering another world. Even the flora there is like prehistoric. It is just amazing. It took my breath away. I don't think it is just good fun for kids. It's an experience for anyone who's looking for something different!

Crystal Palace Park is another park worth visiting with children if you ever find the time. The place benefits of not only the National Sports Centre but also of Dinosaurs. No I haven't lost my marbles, but this park has reconstructions of dinosaurs in real size. Some on the land some on the lake. It is a wonderful show and children there thought they were real dinosaurs hiding from human beings. The place is ideal for a walk as I went there with a friend and her little brother and, if I remember right, there si also a playground near the dinosaurs' site. It is indeed a nice place to visit with children.