Winner Owen has a monster time

Owen Williams-Brain is back in Hastings, after experiencing the arena spectacular Walking With Dinosaurs.

Not many 6-year-olds can say they have seen the dinosaurs up close.

But Owen Williams-Brain has witnessed beasts of all shapes and sizes, including his favourite, tyrannosaurus rex.

The Raureka School pupil, along with his father and grandparents, won tickets to Walking With Dinosaurs in a Hawke's Bay Today, Vector Arena and NZEEC competition at the weekend.

His grandmother, Margaret Brain, is less enthused about dinosaurs than her grandson but said the whole family was rapt with the arena spectacular in Auckland.

"It was mind-blowing, it was just so well done. You have to see it to believe it."

Owen said he had shared the experience with his class for news yesterday morning.

"There was a man standing right by the T-Rex and the T-Rex roared and the man ran away - it was funny."

The colossal creature remained his favourite dinosaur, as shown by his tyrannosaurus rex T-shirt.

The competition prize included flights courtesy of Air New Zealand, while the Brain family also enjoyed premium seats for the night and stay in a family suite at the Waldorf Stadium Apartment Hotel.

Based on the award-winning BBC television series, Walking With Dinosaurs has been playing worldwide, featuring realistic and life-size versions of 10 species, including tyrannosaurus rex, plateosaurus, stegosaurus and allosaurus. The largest dinosaur, the brachiosaurus, is 11m tall and 17m from nose to tail. It took a team of 50 a year to build it for the production.