# Cedar Point Starlight Experience



## derekleffew (Nov 13, 2011)

*josh88* has posted a behind-the-scenes video of the attraction in this post in the Lighting area of CB, but as it deals (a little) with show control integration, I felt it worthy of cross-posting. We can continue discussing LEDs on dimmers there, and everything else here.


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## josh88 (Nov 13, 2011)

Good call. I'd have to say this was a fantastic addition for their halloweekends event. The whole trail used it for ambient lighting and timed it to the soundtrack and the trees could look like they were dripping blood. One of the better $million+ projects they have done in recent years

and rather than keeping the christmas light thread off topic I'll post this here.


derekleffew said:


> "When I was there our primary safety concern was the tinderbox known as the Cedars burning, with occupants trapped inside. Were that to happen while empty, there would have been a celebration!"



while Cedars hasn't improved one bit, now the celebration would be if Mean Streak were to burn. I believe fall of 09 MS did actually catch fire and I think fall of 10 the paint/maintenance shop burned if I remember right.


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## derekleffew (Nov 13, 2011)

Do the special events require flying in programmer(s) from Vegas or has the park personnel taken over programming? 

Watching the video and seeing a 3000 channel Eos/Ion, I was struck by how "un-programmer-friendly" it must be. Not to knock the console by any means, but to have to refer to external magic sheets and drawings to ascertain that the green strings on the fifth tree south of the blacksmith's shop are channel #1537, is hella clunky. We've been inventing tricks and rules to make this easier for the past 30+ years, but I think it's time to go graphical and ditch the numbers, at least for the designer and programmer. Maybe that's Virtual Magic Sheet and/or Jands Vista and/or have a media server do everything, I don't know. Above my pay grade. All I know is it's more complicated than it should be. Computers are supposed to make our lives and work easier, not more complex. Related: Why does the console get in the way of the art?

Another thing, if I may, and more on topic within this forum. I have no experience with SFX or QLab or similar as show control devices, but it seems to me something's out-of-balance to spend so much on lighting control and yet have the master show control be a relatively inexpensive, off the shelf product. I understand budgets and fiscal responsibility and all that, but still. I wonder if I can entice/lure JohnHuntington to comment on this aspect?

Has anyone ever stated what the project budget was? EDIT: Answered:

> The new family attraction will cost approximately $1 million to design and install.


 Seems very reasonable, although modest by Las Vegas' standards. I found some other youTube videos and I'm going to go watch those to see if there's more info on the sound system and other depts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOPzbs8zL3M&feature=related
Cedar Fair seems pretty ingrained in SFX. And to think when I was there the Centennial spot op had to run both spots at once so as to free up a tech to do re-patches on the 48 dimmers during the show.

With an Eos on the project, I would have expected to see Medialon, Alcorn-McBride, Birket, RSD, or another "larger name" master show control. Sounds like the park themselves with limited experience engineered the show control and hired out just the lighting to 4Wall. I also wonder how much, if at all, the ETC factory was involved in the engineering. STEVETERRY or DavidNorth or avalentino want to field that one?

This project was the "big ride" for the 2009 season? I wonder how the system survives the Lake Erie winters? I can't imagine they "de-string" for the off-season. Couldn't they have at least sheet-rocked and painted the "control shack"?


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## josh88 (Nov 13, 2011)

as far as I know they don't take any of it down. I've been through the park while they are closed in the off season and to my knowledge it has stayed in place since they put it in except to replace dead sections, though maintenance on it has already started to lapse some. All of the equipment is the real heavy duty outdoor stuff, but with how harsh the point gets hit with snow and wind and the like I'd be curious to see what shape it's all in 5 years down the line. 

I believe the programming and designs are all done in house now. I know at least in regards to the shows in the red garter saloon they are which I would suspect means the rest are too. I actually turned down an SM or follow spot job there this summer. They were in need of more hands and I just didn't want to get sucked back in.

in regards to SFX I've never used it to timecode a show, but I have used it for cueing of sound effects and it really is a great program. It can do a lot and has a pretty simple learning curve. I learned it in about an hour and taught someone less adept than myself in about the same time. According to their website "SFX is the leading live entertainment sound playback software application" and I doubt any of that statement is attributed to marketing saying it is /sarcasm. 

I think the Live E at the point has some potential but they are (no offense to anybody) just starting to get their heads out of their asses? By that I mostly mean the over all management has finally started to let things go and expand their staff a little better. Their head of Live E left... I think 3 seasons ago? so they had a new guy in and some changes finally got pushed through. 

The show I've most been impressed with is their "All wheels extreme show" in the old stadium. they've had a former Cirque guy, one of the top BMX guys in the country, some X-games winners, a whole bunch of talent which was really surprising for them.

The <i>All Extreme Wheels</i> show at Cedar Point - ESPN


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## cpf (Nov 13, 2011)

derekleffew said:


> Another thing, if I may, and more on topic within this forum. I have no experience with SFX or QLab or similar as show control devices, but it seems to me something's out-of-balance to spend so much on lighting control and yet have the master show control be a relatively inexpensive, off the shelf product. I understand budgets and fiscal responsibility and all that, but still. I wonder if I can entice/lure JohnHuntington to comment on this aspect?



Once the software has proven itself (for both you and the general community) there's no difference between the $250 QLab license and the $insane Medialon install. You'll feel better buying the top-end product at first, but once the show is running smoothly it doesn't matter what's under the hood. While there will be a difference in quality between "pro-ish" and "pro," you have to consider the law of diminishing returns in regards to the pricetag.


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## derekleffew (Nov 13, 2011)

josh88 said:


> ...The show I've most been impressed with is their "All wheels extreme show" in the old stadium. ...


That's not "the old stadium," that's Oceana! Where did the dolphins go, George? Well, they had a good 19 season run.


From The History of Cedar Point :

> 1980-Oceana opens. It's a $3 million 5 story high 1,600-seat stadium where dolphins Striker, Coco, Breezy and Misty; and sea lions Skipper and Brandy perform.
> 1999-Oceana Stadium renamed Cedar Point Aquatic Stadium. Splash!, an innovative and daring high diving demonstration opens
> 2007-Aquatic Stadium is not used for the entire year.
> 2008-The Stadium is renovated and reopens for the new show, "All Wheels Extreme"


BTW, I found the above site way more inclusive than History, News & Media, Cedar Point , just FYI.

And for the record, another CB-er and I worked a theme park "extreme wheels" show in 2000. The trend was waning even then. Just sayin'.


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## josh88 (Nov 14, 2011)

well I know its oceana, but we all refer to it as the stadium now since its easier to explain to people. They had to tear down the aquarium to make room for Wicked Twister and that building had been sitting empty for awhile by the time they started using it for the wheels show.

Where/for who did you work one? Much like a lot of stuff within Cedar Fair, the Extreme BMX, etc came in a bit after the main height of popularity in the country. Though it still a solid show and arguably had the best cast out of the cedar fair wheel's productions ( I know they had one at knotts, not sure about the other parks). Cedar Point tends to get a lot of stuff after it's been tested or tried at other parks, by the time they finally arrive they are a little dated and tired. Part of that had to do with Kinzel living right there and it being the "flagship" so they weren't as free to try things. One of the best anecdotes I've heard is that most CF parks have their own soundtrack and then the Kinzel approved soundtrack for when he visits. It's up in the air with what will happen with him leaving/gone.


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## Morte615 (Nov 14, 2011)

I wanted to wait till I got to a real computer (**** kids for stealing my laptop) before posting in here, and it seems like a bunch of others have already beat me to it!
But Cedar Point, and Cedar Fair in general, are very strict on what we can post online and what we can say. Since this system is very public, and has been from the beginning (hence the videos found online), I am willing to talk about the system and answer as many questions as I can.

First my background with the system. This past summer I worked at Cedar Point as a Stage Tech for the Ice Show. Also while there I worked part time on the Starlight Experience doing maintenance 1 night a week and on occasion helping with trouble shooting when needed. There is only 1 full time person who runs the show, and he has been involved with the show since, I think, 2009. (I should really see if I can get him to come on here a bit lol)

First the system is comprised of both ETC Unison DRD Dimming racks, as well as ETC Smart Packs spread throughout the Frontier Trail (from the Millennium tunnel to the Glass Blower's Shop) Also present are 32 Light-O-Rama boxes in the "Summer" section. These were added to create a lot of channels cheaply and without needing a lot of new infrastructure. These are controlled by an ION/EOS setup that is located over-top one of the retail stores on the trail. And the entire system is run by a SFX computer that sends time code to the EOS. And of course the LOR is triggered by a DMX relay that is connected to a Show Director in one of the boxes.

And of course the show is split into 4 seasons, starting with Spring by the Frontier Town Bridge and moving into Summer, then Fall, and finally Winter. During the annual Halloweekends event parts of the system are used for the Haunted Walk-Through Maniacal Mechanical Screamworks. Though none of the trees are used, we do use the outlets for all of the lights that are installed for the event as well as running all our (35) foggers through DMX and into the board.

Mostly programming is finished and very little changes need to be made. Though this year for Halloweekends, since this was a "new" zone we redid the program from scratch, including new patching and programming. Any programming is handled in house usually by the full time technician.

That's the basic background of the system, if there are any questions about it or how it is controlled I am more than willing to try to answer them.


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## JohnHuntington (Nov 22, 2011)

cpf said:


> Once the software has proven itself (for both you and the general community) there's no difference between the $250 QLab license and the $insane Medialon install. You'll feel better buying the top-end product at first, but once the show is running smoothly it doesn't matter what's under the hood. While there will be a difference in quality between "pro-ish" and "pro," you have to consider the law of diminishing returns in regards to the pricetag.



I don't work for Medialon, but I do use it, and I can tell you that, while you may think the price is "insane", you are crazy if you think that QLab and Medialon Manager are the same thing. QLab can't even talk over Ethernet (other than MIDI over Enet, which is SO 1995  or offer a seriously customizable user interface, serve up web pages (the new version) etc etc. QLab may work perfectly well for an installation like this, but in effect it only speaks MIDI and is very limited. Even its competitor SFX can both speak and listen to TCP. 

There are small sound consoles and big ones, small lighting boards and big ones--whatever is right is whatever works for that application. Manager may be expensive but I don't know any other product that offers the same functionality and support for the same money. 

Also, I really don't understand why people are happy to spend $50,000 on a lighting console, which is basically a computer with a lot of buttons on it, running custom software, but ***** and moan about software--the core of the lighting console--being expensive.

Not only that but both Alcorn and Medialon offer "hardware" products that cost about $2000. A decent Mac and QLab is in the same ballpark.


John


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