T-Rex Opens at Downtown Disney

T-Rex at Downtown Disney is the kind of restaurant where families might encourage their kids to go dig in the dirt before dinner. "It's nice dirt. It's clean dirt," said Keith Beitler, Landry's Restaurants' senior vice president and chief operating officer for specialty restaurants. "It's Disney dirt."

T-Rex at Downtown Disney is a big, brash dinosaur-themed restaurant that opens today at Downtown Disney with seating for more than 620, a couple of dozen life-size robotic dinosaurs and real fossils encased in the bathroom walls.

Dishes include mushroom ravioli simmering in lobster cream sauce, with Roma tomatoes and fresh spinach. Collaborators Landry's Restaurants, Schussler Creative and Walt Disney Imagineering, the team that brought Rainforest Cafe to Walt Disney World, aimed at going way beyond that themed restaurant, to create a more interactive mix of décor, show, dining and educational flourishes that Beitler called "eattainment."