We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jose a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jose, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I’ve always had a passion for entertainment and when I created Front Range Dinosaurs, that’s just what I wanted to do. My goal is to travel across Colorado, inspiring young and old minds alike with the magic of puppetry and dinosaurs. Sure you have museums and sites like Dinosaur Ridge where you can see fossils up close. But my goal is to bring baby dinosaurs to life via puppeteering all while bringing the experience to you. Seeing others light up when they see me with a realistic baby dinosaur in my arms just warms my heart and brings me so much joy. To step up the entertainment factor I even add dinosaur facts and I provide knowledge over the species that I handle almost every day.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Jose Antonio Santana and I was born and raised in a small island called Puerto Rico. I lived on the island with my family until my twelfth birthday, so I was still very young when we moved to Colorado. Even back then in Puerto Rico I was just as obsessed with Dinosaurs as I am now. There was a lot of fun dinosaur content back in the 90s that I loved, for example; I had a VHS copy of the 1994 Dinosaur special from Eyewitness. I also obsessed over a movie from 1993 called We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story, one of my favorite animated movies ever. Let’s not forget the one movie that solidified my passion for dinosaurs. Possibly the greatest dinosaur movie ever made, (at least in my opinion) we cannot forget the 1993 classic: Jurassic Park.

Needless to say, I had dinosaurs on my mind almost 24/7 and the obsession only grew stronger over time. I’ve amassed a decent collection of Jurassic Park toys/memorabilia/collectables and even comic books. But as the years went by I started to focus on attending more Comic-Con style events and this eventually led me into creating my very own Jurassic World inspired SUV. I had this vehicle for several years and it made appearances all over Colorado. From Haunted Houses to being featured in several different Comic-Con events, I was having a blast. Then in 2022 I was able to go on a trip to see the Jurassic World: The Exhibition experience in Denver, and I met one of the puppeteers for the experience there.

This gentlemen taught me how to work with puppets and I even helped him puppeteer his Velociraptor suit at events for a while. Some time passed and he could tell that my love of puppets and dinosaurs was meshing into one passion. We had a long discussion about my position with helping him and we eventually settled on me doing something similar. Since the Jurassic World experience was leaving and probably not coming back, I decided to get my own puppet and follow in my mentor’s footsteps.

That same year I was lucky to hear that a toy company was releasing an affordable baby velociraptor puppet and that it would be easy to get my hands on it. I didn’t miss the chance and I eventually had my very own dinosaur puppet! I also came up with the name I would use from then on with the help of my mentor. Front Range Dinosaurs was created and since that moment I’ve seen the name and my social media climb steadily through the years. I have 4 different dinosaur puppets, two of which are my main ones since they are professionally made from a company over seas.

Front Range Dinosaurs hasn’t changed much, I still have the passion for entertainment and showmanship just as much as I had when I first started. I provide educational presentations regarding my dinosaurs and I think that families appreciate the educational side of it just as much as the puppetry aspect. I really am happy with where I have ended up, being able to bring something similar to a giant exhibition filled with puppets and animatronics to families for parties just by requesting an appearance from me is very satisfying and fulfilling. A lot of people can’t afford to go on vacations to places where they have animatronics and crazy puppets like at Universal for example. But my goal is to provide the same energy and a similar experience but locally!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Honestly, just appearing randomly at events and social gatherings. Especially during the weekends, I just go out with my baby dino puppets to socialize with people all over my town. I even sometimes just run errands with one of them in my arms. Imagine the surprised look someone gives me when I turn the corner at an isle in Walmart with a cart full of groceries and a baby dinosaur in my arm! It’s silly, yes, but that’s what gets people to talk about me. It’s definitely odd and out of place, but that’s why I do it.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building up my social media wasn’t easy, it’s definitely been challenging and has had it’s ups and downs. I already had a decently established social media presence when I started the Front Range Dinosaurs pages because I had been doing Photography for a long time. I had mainly focused on automotive photography and portrait photography before I switched to puppeteering. So naturally the first followers I had came from my photography journey and it helped out quite a bit.

The main advice I would have to share is just constant posting. Create a schedule for when you’re going to be posting during the week and follow it. Don’t focus on the like count of a single post or hope that people will comment. If others want to comment, they will. Like count will fluctuate between posts, one post might get very few likes while your next post will get an unexpected amount of likes and comments. Just be patient and as I said, make posts consistently.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.frontrangedinos.com
• Instagram: @frontrangedinos
• Facebook: @frontrangedinos

Image Credits

Kestrel Eliot