Disney Dreams was created for the 20th anniversary of Disneyland Paris and is an innovative and colorful nighttime spectacular that celebrates the childlike spirit of imagination. Peter Pan and Wendy take us into Disney "dream worlds" as we follow Peter’s shadow and meet many Disney characters along the way.
System Design Challenges
The team needed to create a control system to integrate multi disciplines into a cohesive programming environment—one that would integrate lighting, video playback, audio, lasers, fountains, flames, fireworks, and show action equipment into a highly accurately programmed show. They chose the MA Lighting grandMA 2 lighting control system as the operators interface. The desk directly controls the looks for all show elements, allowing for a single programming interface. Many of the systems presented safety concerns. Dreams utilized a central safety monitoring system, based on Beckhoff Twin Safe hardware and software. The safety system constantly monitored the critical systems to ensure that all required parameters were being met prior to allowing the grandMA 2 to trigger the show cues.
Video Mapping and Programming
Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Paris is a very complicated piece of architecture. It is mapped on three sides, allowing for approximately 260 degrees of coverage. All these different facets, on different planes, with varying shadows presented a great challenge for the team. Green Hippo Hippotizer HDs were chosen as the media servers. Green Hippo upgraded the Hippos with custom built APE software to accommodate the complexities of the model as well as to deliver outstanding playback of the very large 4K files provided by Brinkerhoff and Associates. Additionally the team leveraged the APE software to developed a solution that allowed for direct view and realtime editing of the video files on the castle, while still working in the video team's native graphics environment.
Bringing It All Together
Once the teams arrived onsite, they spent five weeks programming the various show elements. Using the MA system, the creative team directed the individual departments to integrate each element into the Disney Dreams show. Each department shared the castle along with all the normal nightly park maintenance groups. The early spring opening meant that the show teams worked throughout the winter months all night, every night, to prepare for the programming and then to get their elements correctly placed into the show. They endured freezing temperatures, rain, snow, high winds, and even very dense fog. It’s really hard to program a fountain look when it's -3C outside. The show's production stage manager kept the teams moving forward despite the weather and other scheduling challenges.
Equipment List
- 18 Christie Roadie HD 2k Projectors with various lenses
- 12 Green Hippo Hippotizer HD servers running custom APR software
- 18 Blackmagic Designs DVI-to-HDSDI Converters
- 6 Vicom custom built enclosures
- 10 Zap Technology BigLite 5.0
- 2 MA Lighting grandMA 2
- 1 MA Lighting rack unit
- 4 MA Lighting NPUs
- 38 The Fountain People Lumen 260 underwater LED fixtures
- 32 Aquatique Show 25M p-jet fountains
- 6 Aquatique Show 25M moving fountains
- 1 Aquatique Show fog system
- 15 Luantx ISOPAR flame heads
- 1 DGM Custom built "Secomd Star" automated scenic piece
Design Team:
- Producer: Sayre Wiseman
- Creative Director: Steven Davison
- Show Director: Katy Harris
- Sr. Technical Director: Chuck Davis
- Project Manager: Ben Spalding
- Production Manager: Christian Lecossois
- Technical Director: Olivier Bars, Marc Brahimcha, Olivier Moser
- Project Coordinator: Celine Coquin
- Project Coordinator: Yann Cohen
- Lighting &Fountain Design/Programming: Brian Larsh
- Associate Lighting Designer: Christophe Malmejat
- Video Systems Design: Erik Koehler
- Video Programming: Kris Murray
- Pyro Designer: Eric Tucker
- Laser Designer: Claude Lifante
- Production Stage Manager: Sandra Halloran
- Composer: Joel McNeeley
- Music Producer: Matt Walker
- Media Design: Marty Brinkerhoff and Associates
- Walt Disney Feature Animation: Dave Bossert & Liane Dietz
- Pixar Animation: Roger Gould & Liz Gazzano
- Video Technical Director: Bruno Samimi
- Music Recording: Abbey Road Studios