When LuminoCity’s Dino Safari Festival returns to Long Island on July Fourth, visitors will be able to take photos holding a T-rex by a chain leash around its neck.

"Guests like to pose like they’re wrangling it," says project manager John Baiata. "It’s quickly become a photo op favorite." The festival is trying to add more photo opportunities, because that’s what people are looking for, Baiata says. While the festival has several T-rex dinosaurs, this additional one has more refined motions in addition to its chain — even lifelike saliva.

What’s become an annual event will be here for a month longer this year — from opening day on July Fourth through Sept. 1 in the parking lot of Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington Station. "The whole summer, really. Fourth of July through Labor Day," Baiata says. Walt Whitman has proved to be a high-demand location, he says. "It’s also our backyard," he adds, because LuminoCity, which travels up and down the East Coast, is based in Huntington.

The organizers visited an amusement vendors trade show in Orlando to find new options to enhance the experience — also new this year is an expanded LED dance floor about a third bigger than the previous one that offers more colors. It has touch-sensitive tiles that change colors when people step on them and is also popular for photos, Baiata says. "Especially when it gets dark," he says.

The festival has also added three new bounce options that join the original bounce house. The area will be called the Bounce Zone and entering it will entail an additional fee of $20 per person that enables visitors to enter as many times as they want during a visit, Baiata says.

Two of the additional bounce houses are new — "we just took them out of the box yesterday," Baiata says — and the third just debuted when the festival was in Georgia. One of the new bounce houses is an inflatable, dino-themed ax-throwing experience. "The axes are plastic with Velcro heads," Baiata says.

The playground area is also expanding, with a new series of light-up seesaws.

The festival is good for the Walt Whitman Shops because it brings thousands of visitors to the mall, says Maria Cavanagh, director of marketing and business development for Walt Whitman Shops. "We hear from our mall visitors that they love this event," Cavanagh says. "The anticipation in the community has grown."

The Dino Safari Festival is run by the same company that does the annual LuminoCity Holiday Lights Festival in Eisenhower Park in East Meadow. And here’s a sneak peek of what’s to come this holiday season – the festival will be adding a train driven by a conductor to let visitors ride through the light show, Baiata says.