On the evening of June 5th, Cedar Point invited several
media outlets to take a behind the scene look at the park's
new nighttime entertainment offering - Starlight Experience.
The tour was led by Lance Heal, the entertainment production
manager for the park. Starlight Experience, which takes
place on the Frontier Trail, is giant light display themed
to music with other special effects mixed in.
Normally something such as Starlight Experience goes through
a long design phase but Hart and his team only had a few
months to design and get the production off the ground.
Richard Kinzel, CEO of Cedar Fair, approached the
entertainment team last fall with the idea of creating some
kind of light show. Designing and researching began with the
designs finalized by February and construction starting in
March. It was no easy take either.
"12-14 people worked 6 days." Heal said about the
construction process which was much different than their
standard HalloWeekends light and special effect
installations. "Since this is a permanent installation we
are subject to city inspections." This required Cedar Point
to take even more steps during construction to ensure all
codes were met.
It's Show Time!
In order to prepare for Starlight Experience the Frontier
Trail is closed for a brief period of time each night
shortly before dusk. While originally stated to take upwards
of 30 minutes, Heal and his team are determined to open the
Frontier Trail as quickly as possible. A prerecorded
announcement is triggered announcing the trail is closing.
The announcement, along with all other park audio is stored
and controlled in the control center near the front of the
park.
As soon as the announcement is triggered the trail is closed
and floats are pulled out by tractors from behind the
petting farm. The team runs from float to float to secure
them as quickly as possible. When the floats are secured the
team heads up to the control center for Starlight Experience,
which is located on the second floor of Fort Sandusky Mining
Company, to trigger
the start of the show. The trail reopens and Starlight
Experience officially is started.
From the time the trail closes to reopening is a major
concern of the park and they are trying their best to keep
it closed for as short of time as possible. "Nine minutes.
that's a new record for us," Heal told us.
Never ending process
Once the trail reopens and "ohhhs" and "ahhs" are heard by
guests the work is far from done. Two entertainment
employees are on the trail the whole time monitoring and
running the production. They make sure everything is running
smoothly and report any bad lights. Speaking of bad lights -
low level lights will be replaced the same night if the
problem can not be solved while higher up lights are
replaced once a week thanks to the help of a 45-foot tall
man lift.
How it works
As I mentioned before the control center for the Starlight
Experience is located on the second floor of the Fort
Sandusky Mining Company gift shop. Everything from the lights, special
effects, and sound is all controlled from this location.
Their sophisticated control system - which a company from
Las Vegas helped design, features computers and a theatrical
lighting console. Everything talks to each other using SFX/time
code - industry term for a computers talking to each other
to make sure everything is in sync.
The
lighting fixtures and dimmers closest to the control center
receive their commands over Ethernet cable but due to the
length of the trail and the worry about the data losing
strength wireless signals are used for many of the dimmer and light
features. A master wireless unit is mounted on the side of
Fort Sandusky and beams wireless commands up and down the
trail.
Overall, Starlight Experience is an incredible achievement
that the park pulled off in an incredibly short amount of
time. With the relatively low cost compared to a coaster and
the fact every person walking through has a smile, Starlight
Experience is one of the best attractions Cedar Point has
added recently.
