Communication specialist, Alésien Philippe Lopez created Dinopédia. Parks, which feature life-size and animated dinosaurs, magazines and online videos. While its fourth park will open in some time, interview with an enthusiast who also wants to raise awareness of the fragility of nature.
Why do dinosaurs fascinate us so much?
First of all, I believe that we owe a lot to Steven Spielberg, who, in 1993, released the first Jurassic Park. He made these animals of the past real. This fascination also comes from the fantastic side of dinosaurs, which may be somewhat unreal monsters but which existed. This mixture of fantasy and reality really works, especially with children.
Did they fill your childhood imagination?
A bit like everyone else, I think. I wasn’t super into dinosaurs when I was little, but when the film came out I was 19 and it was a shock.
Their world is very much that of books and researchers. With Dinopedia, is it a question of opening it up to as many people as possible?
We work a lot with museums, universities, researchers and their difficulty remains popularization, making their knowledge accessible. I believe that through our parks, we have a bit of this mission, to provide some keys to evolution and what existed during this period. And we have taken on this responsibility, yes, through the parks, our magazines, our channel.
Are these a way of expanding the visit?
Yes. It happened a year and a half after the opening of the first park, where I told myself that we had to become the number 1 dinosaurs in France through the media. We created the magazine “Dinopédia Découverte”, a new version of which will be released in September, with several reading levels from 6 years old; the Youtube channel, where we imagined a sort of “It’s not rocket science” about dinosaurs, with a character called Darwin Jr., and it works very, very well.
Dinosaurs suffered the 5th mass extinction 64.5 million years ago
The dinosaurs disappeared, carried away by the history of the Earth. Are they a way of talking about one’s fragility?
This is my credo. Family, culture and the environment are our three values. The living world forms the link between culture and the environment. Dinosaurs were victims of the 5th mass extinction, 64.5 million years ago, but many survived, especially those that became today’s birds. We explain it, we also explain that we are currently experiencing the 6th major crisis and that birds are in danger, so that children become actors in protecting the planet. This is the message, the line of conduct of Dinopedia.
Free Midi – VICTOR GUILLOTEAU
How was the first park born, in the Cévennes?
It came to my attention that a small tourist site, called the Fossil Forest of Champclauson, a forest of petrified trees in a living position embedded in a cliff, was looking for a buyer. I positioned myself, I studied the period concerned, the Carboniferous, I see that it is followed by the Permian, the Triassic, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous and that a link is possible with the dinosaurs – there was also giant insects at that time – which seems attractive to me. We built our business this way.
Our parks are first and foremost places of nature where parents are entrusted with the role of exploration leader.
Dinopedia presents animated dinosaurs in its parks, but how do you make the visitor an actor, fundamental in a leisure park?
In the customer experience, this is something that we work on a lot, based on our family value. We are far from technology, even if our dinosaurs are animatronic; our parks are first and foremost places of nature where parents are entrusted with the role of exploration leader. They are the ones who will guide their children, give them explanations, we want to create this interaction between them, which will be part of the memories of the visit. For example, children will look at key word panels and, thanks to several reading levels, adults will provide them with details.
How did you decide on the concept that you are now deploying?
I am the father of three children aged 19, 17 and 15 and I spent their childhood creating games, touring parks with them, looking for interactive places for them. And I use all of this, what I have experienced, to ensure that visitors experience in our parks what I enjoyed with my children.
A major economic challenge for a leisure space manager is to bring back visitors. How do you go about it?
We are very lucky, because our customers come several times a year. The subject helps with passionate children. Afterwards, we work a lot on seasonality: Easter with the eggs, and the dinosaur ones are such a size that we’re pretty cool at the time, summer, Halloween where it’s guaranteed to scare you, and then Christmas. We test things in our Cévennes park, which is close to our offices, and then it’s the first, it’s our favorite park. For example, this summer we are launching the Dinoféries, where three times a week, we will open at night. If it works, we will deploy it in other parks.
Midi Libre – Louise Gal
After Mende in 2023, you are preparing to open a fourth…
We did an underground theme park in the Pyrenees last year, in a cave, it was our third. The fourth, Trévoux (Editor’s note, in Ain), is a little late and, behind it, six others are in the works, more or less advanced, mainly in the south, but we have one in Cher and another in Brittany. There are forty of us and with Trévoux, we will be sixty people.
