Tall, petrified trees are among the latest additions to “Life,” the under-construction nature exhibit at Orlando Science Center. Once complete, the large ground-floor installation will have immersive experiences representing reefs, a rainforest and a swamp.
The project is past its half-way point, said Brandan Lanman, vice president of visitor experience for the museum, during a site walkthrough. Visitors peering into the site can see the basic shape of things to come.
“Right now, we’re about to start sculpting out all of the habitats with the rock work,” Lanman said. “We’re about to introduce theming elements in the rainforests that the monkeys and the sloths will get to actually climb on and move around on to make their home.”
The trees, as tall as 23 feet, also will be in the rainforest section. They were carefully moved through the science center and into place as individual pieces recently.
“These trees are really trees that have been, for lack of better terminology, petrified to become the jungle gyms for the monkeys and the sloths,” Lanman said. That area will be “free roam” for the animals, he said. Birds will be flying around in there, too.
“It will be much more immersive than the previous exhibit,” said Jeff Stanford, vice president of communication. “You’ll be much closer to the animals; the animals get much closer to you.”
The $13.5 million exhibit will replace the NatureWorks area, which opened with the science center building in 1997. “Life” will be spread over 10,000 square feet, taking up the NatureWorks space plus the one-time home of KidsTown. Its groundbreaking was in June 2022.
In the museum’s rainforest, monkeys and sloths will have access to the public viewing areas and a backstage place to chill if they want, Lanman said.
“Ideally, they love being out with the visitors. But if they’re having a bad day, you give them the option of not,” he said.
Science center: Animal collection will be at home in upcoming ‘Life’ exhibit
Animals will have choices in the swamp area, which surrounds the giant tree that has stood tall in the center of the science center for years.
“We’re reshaping the entire environment for the animals themselves,” Lanman said.
“They have three basking locations with proper UV lighting,” he said. “So they’ll be able to choose where they want to lie each day. If they don’t like being in the front, maybe they can lie in the back and it’s all choice and control for the animals.”
The renovation holds advantages for people, too.
“We’re making it a lot tighter so that the guests are actually up and under the trees to just give you a bit more of a sense of what it might be like to be under a 30-foot-tall cypress tree,” Lanman said. “Whereas before you were actually in the ceiling area. You never got to be under the trees.”
Elsewhere, there will be two coral-reef tanks plus touch tanks for fish.
“We’re looking at Indian River Lagoon species, for folks to get really connected with and not be afraid of what is in their own backyards,” Lanman said.
The area will include digital interactives to help folks identify the fish, and it is designed to “feel like an underwater bubbly world,” he said. “Like you’re looking at the reef tank while being in the reef.”
It’s a complicated project. The rainforest has its own HVAC system for proper humidity and temperature control. The lighting will change for day and night settings. There are water pumps, reconfigured plumbing and hand-sculpted rockwork, which may take 10 to 12 weeks to complete.
There were also the “normal hiccups” of construction, too, Stanford said, and the opening date was pushed from late 2023 to spring of 2024. It’s the largest exhibit-construction project in the museum’s history
“You’re building a theme habitat that has aspects of an aquarium, aspects of a zoo, and doing that in an operational museum during the busiest season,” he said.
Some delays had a ripple effect. A hold-up with steel meant the up-high elements couldn’t be completed, and the scaffolding had to stay in place, which meant the rockwork tasks couldn’t be started.
“It was a really complicated engineering project to retrofit into an existing building something like a fully enclosed walk-through rainforest,” Lanman said. “It wasn’t simple.”
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