And now organisers have announced the addition of two interactive activities for young explorers, sure to make the 3000m² display one to remember.

A 60 metre Ice Slide, coupled with a 12 metre Snow Blizzard Tunnel, will now be joining 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 Ice Age 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.
 
Describing a few of the other activities available in the interactive zone, Beukes says: “Youngsters will have the opportunity to be archaeologists in the sandbox excavation zone where they can discover important ‘fossils’ first-hand. We’ve even created a virtual aquarium 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.”
 
Along with the 60 metre Ice Slide, 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. All activities are individually priced and are subject to availability and change.
 
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, 20 June at 09:00. The exhibition will be open for seven weeks only with no further extensions. Visitors are encouraged to book their tickets early to avoid disappointment. Bookings can be made via Computicket.
 
School groups interested in booking an outing outside the June/July school holiday period can email Ilani at [email protected].

For more information on the venue, dates and times of the Ice Age Exhibition, visit www.theiceage.co.za.