Related: The Wax Museum After Dark / Themed Design: The Attraction of Scent

By Mikkel Sonne

The design consists of three lighting rings encircling each tree on the avenue, but without touching it. The outside of the ring is an LED strip, giving a glow of light, while the inside LED strip lights up the tree itself and mirror discs hanging on the branches of the tree will reflect the light rays in all directions as they move freely in the wind.

The installation will change color, intensity and rhythm and will have a special colour scheme for the days of, before and after Christmas. For New Years Eve a special light show will be programmed, with the twelve strokes of midnight being visualised all along the Champs-Élysées.

The concept is designed by Koert Vermeulen and Marcos Viñals Bassols, from Belgian ACT lighting design, who has experience of show lighting (among their many projects - Le Rêve at the Wynn in Las Vegas and the Singapore Youth Olympic Games 2010), themed attractions (Futuroscope, Tivoli, Center Parcs, Parc Asterix) and countless outdoor lighting projects.

And now ACT is combining their experience from these diverse projects into what seems to be a very contemporary street theatre show. Principal designer Koert Vermeulen states that they wanted to break away from the traditional Christmas lighting designs and create something with a strong identity. And a green one, too. The new lighting scheme will have a 51% energy consumption compared to last year.

Champs-Élysées' new Christmas illuminations will be inaugurated November 23rd and will be on show every Christmas till 2014.

Photo credit: ACT lighting design

Related: Where is the next growth market for themed attractions?

The vast majority of people – all but one -- responded that they were going to the Expo and answers as to as their “main objective” range from wanting to make contacts and launch products to (of course) looking forward to the parties!

Here are some of the highlights of this discussion …

• We need to find some revenue generators and work on a long term plan for implementation of some new product in our park.

• We’re looking for animatronics and mascots. There is no exhibition in the world that you can find so many producers of that sort of things.

• Looking forward to discussing our newest high tech ride attractions and service projects with our valued clients. No other gathering in the industry brings so many people together and we look forward to seeing many friends.

• We are looking to connect with new prospects who share our vision of making the customer smile. We look forward to meeting and sharing our vision of customer engagement and entertainment with fellow believers ?We look forward to meeting you there.

• A great place to conduct business, network with global colleagues, both clients and suppliers, see old friends and meet new ones.

• We are showcasing our different companies and capabilities trying to find that next great project, as well as searching the floor for new attractions and old friends.

• Looking for "what's new” and holding meetings with clients and prospects. 

• IAAPA is a terrific opportunity to meet with potential clients and show off our latest products.

• Interview electrical engineers, technical designers, estimators and project managers.

• We will be exhibiting and showcasing our latest product.

• I'll be attending for the first time. Hoping to meet others in the industry, see what's going to be new from everyone for 2012, and share what we're up to. We decided to skip having a booth this year, but we plan to next year.

• I'm looking forward to my very first IAAPA Expo. I hope to reconnect with some people I've already met and also to meet some new people and introduce them to our technology. Tremendously excited, for all the reasons everyone else is saying, plus it will be nice to be a little warmer than it is in the UK right now!

• We are exhibiting.I will also be walking the show talking to other exhibitors to add to our always expanding network of resources.  Can't wait to see everyone there!

• I am going to IAAPA just so I can party with Jeff at the Hettima Group

• I haven't been since 2001. I can't believe it's been 10 years.

• I will be there celebrating 25 years in this business! Also looking forward to catching up with old friends and colleagues and spending a few days at the Disney, Universal and Lego parks with my wife and 3-year old!   

• Excited to share with everyone our new and exciting venture.  Looking forward to connecting with old friends and making some new ones!

• Looking forward to meeting Tracy Kahaner : )

• We are looking to meet with our current clients and meet new ones.

• I am looking forward to giving Charlie Read and entourage a lift to where ever they happen to be going!

• I has been a few years now since my last IAAPA, but it will be fantastic to be back!

• Announcing our service and looking for leads and prospects.

• Dare one say I'm looking forward to the parties?

• Obviously!  I'm also looking forward to a great week in Orlando, and see if our industry is really so good at weathering the current global economic crisis as it looks like.

• See you all there!

Just to remind you, in their words “The Millennium Commission assisted communities in marking the close of the second millennium and celebrating the start of the third. The Commission used money raised by the National Lottery to encourage projects throughout the nation which enjoyed public support and would be lasting monuments to the achievements and aspirations of the people of the United Kingdom.”

Related:   Should National Museums allow Free Entry? / What is more important, recruitment or training? 

By Martin Barratt

The website has a searchable database that gives access to all the projects they supported… but hang on a bit, some of them are missing! The Millennium Commission website exhorts us to “…Search the Millennium Project database to find out about all the different types of project the Commission has funded.”, but try typing in ‘Earth Centre’ or ‘Big Idea’ and there are no results.

The website was abandoned in 2007 so it’s no surprise that it still lists Wildwalk and the Imax theatre as part of At-Bristol, although these closed four years ago. Do you remember the rather touching innocent surprise of management, when the sponsorship and public funding that bridged the gap between its costs of £6m a year and its revenues of £4.5m dried up? One of the buildings so expensively restored as part of the Millennium project is now an aquarium run by a commercial operator who I suppose are the ultimate beneficiaries of the lottery funding.

Every year that passes the abandoned website will get more out of date; already it’s a rather poignant corner of the internet, a bit like the unchanging face of Dorian Grey it will never age while the attractions it represents fade and die.

And that of course is the tragedy, not the abandoned website. Last month we learned about the demise of Ceramica in Stoke on Trent. The £3.5 million pottery museum was closed by trustees in March after Stoke-on-Trent City Council pulled the Burslem venue's £150,000-a-year funding. Now it has been placed into receivership and the locals are all in favour of its conversion into a Wetherspoons, but the old town hall that housed the exhibition is owned by the Town Council and the rather horrid extension by the Big Lottery Fund, so who knows what they will allow to happen. What is certain is that the money used to develop it will be largely wasted and whatever benefit still remains from the investment will likely be enjoyed by a commercial company.

Similar to the Earth Centre (see images) then, which cost nearly £64m and received a Millennium Commission Grant of £36m. After it closed Doncaster Council got fed up with paying £200,000 a year to maintain it and they sold it for an undisclosed sum to a company planning to develop a commercially focussed activity centre for school children expected to open in 2012.

Are we seeing the start of a trend here? How bad does our economy have to get before more local councils pull the plug on their Millennium white elephants?

The Commission was quick to shout about any of its attractions which beat their visitor targets, but do any of the Millennium projects even approach their visitor targets now? How many are truly commercially viable and wouldn’t have to close if their public funding was pulled?

I suspect that the answer would be very few, if any, and that should be no surprise. After all The Millennium Commission itself admitted that it had “…taken some calculated risks. It would have been easy to invest in the  traditional tourist honeypots, but the aim was to get a UK-wide spread of projects and schemes. The Commission invested in some deprived areas because we believe this attracts new investment and raises the level of the local economy.”  In other words they invested in attractions built in places where no commercial attraction would work.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if more Millennium projects followed Ceramica into oblivion, leaving their expensively developed sites to be exploited by commercial operators.  Am I alone in thinking that the whole Millennium fiasco was a scandalous misuse of money raised from what is ultimately a tax on the poor? According to a Theos study in 2009, their research adds to a growing body of evidence which shows that Lottery players come from poorer backgrounds. They also spend significantly more, as a proportion of their household income, than more affluent players. The poor tax they gambled on the Lottery was used to create visitor attractions that could never pay their way and which would have to be supported from their council tax, until the point when they can be supported no more and they are sold off cheap.

Maybe it’s time for someone, anyone, to revisit the Millennium Commission website and try to express just a little humility for the mistakes they made.