CD+M Lights Legoland’s Dragon Roller Coaster

The Dragon roller coaster at Legoland features entertainment lighting in an architainment setting. “The guest starts in the kingdom’s enchanted castle before roaring out to encounter the dragon and the twists and turns of the steel roller coaster,” explains Ted Ferreira, managing director at CD+M Lighting Design Group, which has lit Legolands in Johor, Malaysia and Dubai, UAE, and has a third project coming up in South Korea.

Four ETC Source Fours with R305 gel (rose gold) and ETC gobo rotators provide constantly moving texture, while 30 Altman Micro Ellipse fixtures and five ETC Source Four Minis light the Lego statues, plus one Mini for the sword hanging on wall. Nine Altman 3'' Fresnels provide backlight for the statues in purple, with blue along the walls. “It’s a little hard to tell in this photo but the torches on the wall light up and are completely made of Legos,” explains Jayme Smothers, associate designer at CD+M. In a “torture” chamber scene, four Rosco X24 X-Effects Projectors aid the look. 

“Our biggest obstacle was focusing all those lights,” adds Smothers. “We weren’t allowed to touch anything made of Legos, and we were straddling the coaster track, so real estate was hard to find.”

Control is via an Eaton/Cooper system, which features an Eaton touchscreen station on the wall in the ride control station room. “Eaton provided a parkwide system, and each attraction has a sub-system controller that is tied to show controls,” adds Ferreira.

Parkwide design was by Forrec Ltd, with scenic design for the attraction by Lego/Merlin Entertainment in-house. And yes, “Every figurine is built of Legos,” says Ferreira. “In fact, most everything except the tables was made from Legos.”