On May 7, as part of the celebrations for the coronation of King Charles III, Skymagic Drone Shows pulled off the largest ever multi-location drone show in the UK. The company flew three shows in separate UK locations at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, Cardiff Bay, Wales, and the Eden project,Cornwall. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the shows live, the event was watched by 12.3 million television viewers.
Patrick O’Mahony, founder and director of Skymagic, told the BBC that the shows, which required 1,000 drones in total, had to be rehearsed in secret in Yorkshire in the North of England so that the press and royal watchers would not be able to spoil the surprise.
The drone choreography included a lion's head rising over the stage at Windsor for Katy Perry's performance of Roar, and a blue whale and a butterfly during British-Moroccan singer Zak Abel's cover of the Simple Minds hit Don’t You Forget About Me. There was also a multicolored version of the clematis flower named for Prince Charles. Three operators were needed to run the fleet of drones, one per site.
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