Exhibition News October 2022 | Page 48

VENUES

Brave new world

A record-breaking dinosaur exhibition represents the first venture into a new world for ExCeL London as the Docklands venue looks to expand its offering outside of exhibitions . Words : Emily Wallin

Welcoming dinosaurs into the venue has opened the doors of opportunity for ExCeL London .

Jurassic World : the Exhibition had a recordbreaking opening at ExCeL London on 25 August .
The event was ExCeL ’ s first venture into live immersive events and is set to change how the wider campus is used . The show has already sold more than 100,000 tickets in presales prior to the gates to the famously terrifying attraction opening .
Following Formula E
in August , and planning permission granted last year to redevelop the dockside the venue is looking at how it can make use of the wider campus and traditionally quieter times in the trade show calendar .
Head of attractions and live events at ExCeL London , Damian Norman said : “ Jurassic World : the Exhibition is the first enter into the immersive experience genre for us as a business . It coincides with the opening of the Elizabeth line very recently and I ’ m delighted to say the event sold 1000,000 in advance . It ’ s the highest
Damian Norman
number of tickets sold before a Jurassic World the Exhibition has opened and it ’ s been in eight countries globally . So , we ’ re thrilled to bits with the first outing .
“ It ’ s been a great journey . It is changing what we do as a campus and suddenly we have a whole leisure offering .
“ The build time on this was 22 days , the planning a year and a bit . You are building a set of theme park standards and seeing a large volume of people , 3,000- 4,000 a day , spread out over a long period . What we ’ re used to is maybe 10,000 arriving in an hour and a half , whereas now it is 300 to 400 people so it ’ s pretty capable for us .”
In October 2021 ExCeL secured permission to expand the venue from Newham Council , to increase the building ’ s usable event space by 25,000sqm .
At the time CEO Jeremy
48 — October