Watch: Dorothy the dinosaur boosts Telford Shopping Centre visitor numbers

The animatronic monster is working wonders at the centre, which has seen crowds flock there since the start of the school holidays.

The centre owners say the seven metre-tall model helped bring more than 260,000 visitors to the centre in its first week.

The tyrannosaurus rex was installed two weeks ago, and bosses say it is helping attract visitors to the town centre shopping mall.

The improvement goes against a trend of falling visitor numbers in centres around the country. Retail sales fell by 0.9 per cent last month.

Centre manager Glynn Morrow said: "Telford welcomed 263,000 visitors to the centre last week – and we are sure that our Dinosaur Experience is a key factor."

"We are overjoyed to be massively outperforming the national average, which saw shopping centre footfall down 0.6 per cent last week.

"We believe is it vital to offer guests a variety of high quality entertainment and events to complement their shopping experience, and this latest activity certainly seems to have captivated audiences, with visitors coming from right across the West Midlands.

"The excitement of children when Dorothy comes to life and lets out a mighty roar that echoes all the way down our mall has been such a thrill to witness."

The dinosaur will be in action for the last time on Saturday, with exhibitions of the beast in action every half hour between 10am and 4pm. It also has smaller exhibits around the centre.

The dinosaurs have been created by Twins FX, which supplies visual special effects, illusions and animatronics for theatre, film and television.

Dorothy is more than 6.5 metres long and, at around 600 kilos, is one of the biggest exhibits ever put into the centre.