Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast is Australia’s premier theme park where movies come to life and everyone’s a star. You can meet your favourite stars and super heroes, experience the adrenaline pumping thrill rides and watch an array of spectacular shows.
Recently Movie World upgraded the park’s main Main Street show and park general architectural lighting and a new lighting control system was required. Rather than an off the shelf, stock standard media server and lighting console, products were required that could be customized to suit the unique operating environment of a theme park.
MA Lighting consoles have been the console of choice for Village Roadshow Theme Parks since 2009 and fortunately they could meet this brief with a grandMA2 light console, an MA onPC command wing and a MA onPC fader wing. Added to that was a coolux Pandora’s Box media and show control system.
“We have been using a small MA on PC system to run a few components in the park for a couple of years and wanted to expand on that,” commented Clint Dulieu, Lighting Supervisor for Village Roadshow Theme Parks. “The new wings are the control solution in the control room as they are used mostly for playback. The grandMA2 light console is portable and used for programming around the park and for various events and functions.”
As well as running the architectural lighting at night time, the MA control system takes care of the daytime operation of effects, such as bubble machines, for the daily parade. It is also used for a combination of corporate events as well as Movie World’s own special events such as Fright Nights and White Christmas.
“Apart from the fact that MA is our preferred control solution, we chose MA for its network ability so we can have multiple consoles in different locations on the same network,” Clint remarked further. “Being a theme park, there is no way to ever see what you are lighting from one position. The MA system allows us to have a system online all the time whilst being able to come and go from it as we please from various locations around the park. We’ve also cooked up some external stuff such as remote analogue triggers and time-code so people can run the shows without much MA training. It’s all quite automated which is ideal for a theme park environment.”
Clint says that the other big advantage to the MA system is being able to customize the set up so they have various access levels for different users. Clint makes extensive use of macros and layout views to make things very simple to operate for his less experienced users.
“We plan to expand upon the system over time,” he added. “That should be simple and cost-effective as it’s just a matter of us adding in more network processors to handle that expansion rather than having to create a whole new control system each time.”
The coolux Pandora’s Box was installed to be the overriding control for the main LED screen installed at the park. It primarily plays out scheduled media loops and daily announcements.
“It needs to be done in an automated fashion, taking inputs from our live switcher and so forth,” explained Clint. “It’s all controlled through a customized front end using the Widget Designer application making it very simple to operate. We’ve been successfully running coolux at the Australian Outback Spectacular for the past four years without any problems. It was good that, through the Widget Designer software, we can easily customise the daily operation and content for the LED screen.”
