Last Updated on October 3, 2025
Damian Lewis narrates an action-packed hour of immersive nature doc-style reptile drama at Lightroom in Kings Cross.
On a mission to see Prehistoric Planet, we travelled just ten minutes from King’s Cross Station, through the redevelopment of Coal Drops Yard, which is still awaiting the opening of Google’s ‘landscraper’ headquarters. We arrived at the relaxed and modern setting of Lightroom. This immersive experience group now has its productions showing in Asia, the US and Europe. Dropping our bags at the cloakroom, we waited for our allotted time in the café, which was serving St. John pastries and a very competitively priced coffee offering.
Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs actually opened in July and has been extended due to popular demand through January. You may have seen advertisements for it and Lightroom’s other current showing, The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks, which make up the venue’s Winter season.
The space itself is a 3-story box beneath the café, painted white and projected on every wall and the floor with the show itself. There is stepped seating, as well as benches and pillows, to sit on the floor. There is also plenty of space for kids to run around and follow the specially animated elements projected onto the floor. The projections fit perfectly together, allowing for a shadowless and seamless viewing experience that truly encompasses all 360 degrees.
Once we got in, we realised Prehistoric Planet runs on a loop of six segments, a little bit like a museum film with no specific start or end. Viewers leave once they’ve reached the point in the movie they arrived at. Every segment concludes with a satisfying round-up of the entire experience. As such, there is no need to fret about your specific start time if you arrive a little bit early or late. This is especially helpful, as the show is very child- and disability-friendly. The space is wheelchair accessible, and the dinos are sure to keep both you and your kids’ attention.
The six parts of Prehistori cPlanet are: ‘Age of Giants’, ‘The Tree of Life’, ‘Raising the young’, ‘Monsters in the Mind’, ‘Unearthing the Past’ and ‘Patterns in Evolution’. Each adapts dramatic segments from the Apple TV+ programme of the same name, complete with stirring music from Hans Zimmer and collaborators. I was especially reminded of some of the recent high-octane chase scenes from David Attenborough’s series for the BBC, and this is unsurprising as their world-famous Bristol-based Natural History Unit is also involved.
Not only are the dinosaurs themselves portrayed with Jurassic Park-level CGI, but they are also presented as living, raising their children, fighting, and dying across incredible vistas that stretch across the projected space. Deep oceans, volcanic wastelands and dense rainforest surround you. The most significant opportunity afforded by the space, however, is to portray these enormous creatures at their actual size, towering above the audience, which makes the existence of these long-extinct lizards much easier to envision.
Prehistoric Planet is clearly highly researched, complete with detailed explanations of the fossilisation process and an epic segment relating the ways convergent evolution helps scientists use modern-day animals to understand how these ancient ones would have lived.
If you need an hour’s relaxed family entertainment, you can’t do much better than the epic scale of Prehistoric Planet. World-class visuals, music and storytelling can’t be beat.
[12] Lewis Cubitt Square,
Kings Cross
London,
N1C 4DY
9 July 2025 – 25 January 2026
Looking for something in South London? Jurassic World is currently running at Battersea Power Station
Or for something completely different, check our preview of Harry Potter Revisited
Leave a Reply