Noah’s Ark, Dinosaurs, and a Theme Park - The Boston Globe

We climb 26 steps to the first floor of the ark. Our tour will be quick, we’re told, because this is an
active construction site, and workers are on a strict deadline. The Ark Encounter, the world’s first theme park to boast a life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark, would open no matter what on July 7, 2016, a date chosen because 7/7 corresponds to a biblical verse from Genesis: “Then Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him entered the ark because of the water of the flood.”

I’m one of a handful of journalists being led through the empty structure by Ken Ham, president and founder of Answers in Genesis, or AiG, a Christian organization committed to “upholding the authority of the Bible from the first verse.” Ham is probably most well-known beyond Christian circles for his 2014 debate with Bill Nye “The Science Guy” over evolution. A former science teacher himself, in Australia’s public school system, Ham believes passionately that the world was created exactly how the opening verses of the Bible explain: in six 24-hour periods of time, about 6,000 years ago, by God.

Throughout the tour, an armed guard sticks close to Ham, which, we’re told, is standard for media visits. Ham shows us where Noah’s bedroom will be as well as photos on his phone of what some of the other exhibits are expected to look like. AiG boasts that the ark is the world’s largest timber-frame building. Based on the dimensions given in the Bible, the structure is 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high. If you laid all this timber end to end, it would stretch from its home in Williamstown to Philadelphia. After the ark opens its doors in July, AiG plans to eventually work on a replica of the Tower of Babel, described in Genesis 11. The entire project will cost more than $150 million, with the first phase costing $91 million. According to estimates from America’s Research Group, the Ark Encounter will host between 1.4 million and 2.2 million visitors in its first year.

One important note is that most of the animals that will eventually fill the ark will be animatronic — presumably because it would be difficult to fill the boat with temperamental animals, like lions and tigers and dinosaurs.

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Noah’s Ark, dinosaurs, and a theme park - The Boston Globe