It's Fast! It's a Blast! It's in the Past!

Under the direction of Dr. Helen Marsh, the Dino Institute and Chrono-Tech have developed an entirely new way to study dinosaurs. No more digging. With their Time Rover transports, scientists can go back to the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods and observe dinosaurs as they lived.

Time Rover Tours have also now been opened up to the public, another of Marsh's creative yet highly controversial revenue-generating schemes. Guests visiting the Institute for the tours are shuffled past the museum displays and into one of two Orientation Rooms for a briefing from Marsh and one of her assistants, typically Dr. Grant Seeker.

Then it's on to the secret underground research facility where the time travel experiments have been taking place. We are most definitely in a behind-the-scenes area, with nondescript concrete walls and exposed utility lines. Some attempt has been made to dress up the space with large banners, but it's clear that museum visitors aren't typically allowed back here. Surely, once Marsh proves the viability of the Time Rover Tours, the funding will come through to make this area look as polished and professional as the rest of the Institute.

Pipes, wires and cables run throughout the facility. It all looks highly scientific. (Note the red, yellow and white tubes labeled with the formulas for ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise - a nod to the attraction's original sponsor, McDonald's.)

We board the Rover vehicle, pick up a charged ion flow from the parallel time converters, then it's off to the Cretaceous period for a prehistoric adventure.

Before blasting back through time, though, pause for a bit of Hidden Disney. This sector ID can be spotted on the right, just past the load zone. CTX-WDI-AK98 translates to Countdown to Extinction (the attraction's original name), Walt Disney Imagineering, Animal Kingdom 1998 (the year the park and the attraction opened).

Thanks to Dr. Seeker's meddling, we actually end up in the late Cretaceous period, around the time that meteor fragments are pummeling the earth. We narrowly escape the debris storm and the jaws of a hungry Carnotaurus and make it safely back to the Institute.

We don't come back alone, though. We bring along "one additional passenger... extra large!" The Iguanodon can be seen on security monitors, wandering the halls of the Dino Institute as the scientists try madly to track him down. (Extinct Attraction Note: When Discovery River Boats plied the waters of Disney's Animal Kingdom, they would come across a large Audio-Animatronic of the escaped Iguanodon near the shores of Dinoland.)

After this episode, Seeker will surely be fired. Marsh may even be removed from her post as Director. One group's jobs are secure, though... the paleontologists digging up fossils the old fashioned way.