Halloween comes more than once a year at Eli Roth's Goretorium in Las Vegas where guests are exposed to the most intense live terror experience in town. Alcorn McBride plays a big part in the spookfest, with three compact Digital Binloops and two ProTraXX units for audio playback. A versatile, frame-accurate V4 show controller runs the show from the central equipment room.
Open year-round on the Las Vegas Strip, the $10-million Goretorium is a 15,000 square-foot attraction featuring a to-go bar, unique horror retail shop, and '60s inspired 'Baby Dolls' lounge. The multi-level space features 24 individually themed rooms set within a mythical horror hotel, where guests witness gruesome sights and sounds as they encounter live actors, animatronic frights and special effects.
"All of the sounds and music are played through Alcorn machines from the entrance in the lobby area to the last room, plus the bathrooms and the Baby Dolls lounge," says consultant Dale Whealton CTS who specified the gear. "The triggered sounds are the most interesting. They might include a character that appears and screams at you or an animatronic animal that jumps out. The Alcorn V4 show control unit triggers the animatronics, the effects and the sounds. Manual triggers are activated by the actors."
He notes that 96 tracks of Digital Binloops are used for audio beds and point source audio while the ProTraXX units are primarily deployed for the triggered samples.
According to project lead Gary Brown with integrator Technology West, Alcorn equipment is the industry standard for attractions like Goretorium. "I come from a themed entertainment environment, and Alcorn is the standard system show controller at the major theme parks," he says. "There are 33 system inputs currently. An optical trigger delivers signals to the V4 to commence special effects, such as making a mechanical dog bark." Eight audio triggers are dedicated to the bathrooms alone, delivering sounds of whispering, laughter and rats.
Whealton reports that Alcorn equipment was chosen for its robustness in a grueling environment. "A haunted house is not the most friendly environment for electronics," he reminds us. "There's a lot of fog, steam, blood and body parts. But the CompactFlash format of Alcorn equipment is robust, and we've never experienced a failure. We've never had to worry about it. It performs fabulously."
Brown concurs. "The Alcorn equipment runs five nights a week for seven hours a night and performs fantastically," he says.