We ate there on our first day of our vacation, which was a Wednesday afternoon around 4pm. The crowd wasn't bad at all at that time of day, but by the time we got out, the line was out the door. So if you can get there at an off time, you'd do better, I'm sure.
The gift shop and build a dino is adjacent to the restaurant and you use the same entrance for both. We didn't even go into the shops because they were mobbed even though the restaurant wasn't yet. But it looked like fun.
I agree, it is a VERY LOUD restaurant. My daughters were covering their ears for the first 5 minutes or so until they got used to it. But on our last day we went to Planet Hollywood and that was MUCH LOUDER, which was hard to believe. But the two had very different kinds of noise, of course. So it depends one what you think you could handle. We didn't mind the dinosaur noises and the meteor showers, but Planet Hollywood's loud music had us crazy by the time we left.
The food was good. I think my kids got pizza and dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. I think my husband got ribs and I got a burger of some sort. If you have room for it, don't miss the Chocolate Extinction for dessert. It was so neat I had to take pictures of it and it's enough to feed a family of 4 at least (we had a family of 5 and we couldn't finish it!).
It is well worth the money to eat there. As somone else said, be sure to check out all the rooms while you're there. This one was even really amazing for me and DH, not just the kids.
