As a child, growing up in Southern California, we would go to Disneyland with a certain degree of regularity (being only about an hour away). Even with the somewhat regular schedule of attendance, when I knew I was going to the next morning, I would have great difficulty falling asleep the night before (almost as bad as trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve).
As I expanded my knowledge of technology, through my adolescence, I began to view the rides, both the new creations, and ones I had been on hundreds of time, with a view of how these creations were created, how the technologies were harnessed to tell the varied stories. It didn’t help that I had a leg up on the basis, being raised in the Movie industry by a Father who did Special Effects professionally (I was introduced to the “Anarchist Cookbook” at an early age – the original – to assist in building explosives for use in a movie).
Between this odd background, and the many years I spent studying music, eventually led me into the live entertainment industry – specifically, lighting, sound, video and rigging for concerts, conventions and special events. In the late nineties, my Father was contracted to add Special Effects to “The Hidden Mine Ride” at a new theme park, “Jungle Land at Mersal Village” in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (renamed the “Lost Mine”). I ended up being contracted to do the lighting, sound, video integration and show control. Later, I was asked to do lighting, sound and show control throughout the park walkways and a few special features. I’ll probably do a series of posts about this project later.
Several years after completing the installation of Jungle Land, I was hired to design and install theming for a Pirate themed restaurant, “Pirate Island Pizza” in St. George, Utah. I also designed the theming for the second location, though another group was hired to do the A/V installation. Later, when the corporation bought the store back, I had to maintain the cheap, hacked home automation system with cheap Chinese theatrical lighting (the equipment I used was all theatrical and industrial level systems, meant to last for years).
During the design phase of the project, I did many visits to Disneyland, specifically, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride. Specifically, I would look to see the lighting and audio techniques the Imagineers used (if you get a chance to go, look back every few minutes, especially if you’re sitting in the front of the book. Pretty soon, everyone will be looking back when you look, to see what you’re looking at!).
I also “borrowed” the concept of the thunderstorm the “Rainforest, Cafe”. I do believe mine read better though. With the audio controller I used, and with my lighting design, I would have the storm start back corner of the restaurant, and roll through to the front. We also created a canon fight between our faux ship, and a “fort” we built.
Unfortunately, neither of the pirate themed restaurants exist any more. They were a lot of fun to design and build (and stretched me quite a bit. I was sitting down with the founder of the Pirate restaurants today, and he showed me a video of a pirate themed restaurant in France that “borrowed” a lot of our design for their restaurant. Their ship wasn’t as tall as ours (forcing the cannon heads to be aimed up, so as not to blast the patrons in the face with smoke), and their lighting design was very rudimentary (some of the lighting looked good, and some quite bad). And the dialog for the pirates is just annoying.
They even used the skull cave entrance to the arcade. It opened up about two years after we opened our first restaurant (and we just found out about it). Well, they do say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. And I do give them credit for integrating live actors with zip lines. It’s just hard to see someone take my artwork. While I was taking someone else’s. Ya, it’s a hypocritical loop. Oh well, just got move on.