Theme Parks and Cultural Attractions: Judy Rubin reports on IAAPA in Las Vegas, Part 2

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 Theme Parks and Cultural Attractions: Judy Rubin reports on IAAPA in Las Vegas, Part 2 From Insecticide to Coney Island, Flip books to running machines, Blooloop Editor Judy Rubin reports from the show floor at the year's biggest bash and meets an industry leader who is just not what he was..

Coney Island wants you – right now (Hurry!) Actively seeking developers who can fast-track attractions to open at Coney Island in time for Memorial Day 2010 was a New York City team including Nathan Bliss, assistant VP of NYC economic development. They reached out in force, with a session and a booth on the IAAPA floor. They declared that the city is ready to restore Coney Island's position as a major entertainment destination over the short term and the long term, and to provide support, infrastructure and marketing power. They report having a land purchase contract, a city council ratified plan and the zoning to go with it. (See www.nycedc.com/rfp and NYC to buy land to revive Coney Island amusements) USA Pavilion at Shanghai Nick Winslow, the miracle-maker who with partner Ellen Eliasoph is producing the USA Pavilion for Shanghai Expo 2010, was present at IAAPA, shmoozing in the company of his longtime colleague, economics research specialist Tracy Kahaner (also Blooloop's news editor). While US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has launched a final push to raise the remainder of the pavilion's $61 million budget, Winslow's team has gotten on with pavilion staffing with the help of a student ambassador program via the University of Southern California China Institute. A total of 543 students applied to the program (deadline was Nov 15) and from that total will be selected two groups of 80 students to work as docents in the pavilion, living on site in the Expo Village. Museums and Science Centers “Being a museum guy, I don't understand Las Vegas,” said Dan Moalli of Design & Production. He has been busy over the past year keeping the company busy with such projects as a major renovation of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, which opened in October. With D&P on the project team designing, lighting and building exhibits, media and AV were Gallagher & Associates and Gallagher's media arm, GTOO, as well as media producer Cortina Productions. In the wake of his successful executive production role on the Kimball Museum of Natural History for the California Academy of Sciences, Jonathan Katz (left) of Cinnabar is a featured speaker on two museum conference panels coming up: at the California Association of Museums (CAM) in February, and the American Association of Museums (AAM) in May. Cinnabar is now engaged as part of the team creating the new Age of Mammals galleries for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Telus World Edmonton is undertaking a $350 million expansion, recently approved by the Board of Directors, according to Ian McLennan of Ian McLennan Consulting. The expansion will include an early childhood development center, a new digital visualization theater, a revamped giant-screen cinema, and expanded science galleries. The city of Edmonton is positioning itself as a candidate for the 2017 expo and Gordon Linden, who showed us an advance copy of The Expo Book, authored by Linden and Paul Creighton and soon to be available in print, is consulting. Rob Wyatt, principal and co-founder of EDG, reports the company is working on a plan for revitalizing existing Fort Edmonton in Edmonton, Canada, into a living history park that celebrates the history of that city from the fort days through the 1920s... Michelle Ouellette, director of business development at Sky-Skan reports two new digital dome theater installations in Asia – a stereoscopic 3D, 8k fulldome planetarium theater system in Macau, and an 8k fulldome planetarium theater for the Hong Kong Space Museum. Insecticide the Ride (left) is the name of a new interactive adventure from Garner Holt Productions, in which you kinda get to reverse the effects of the movie The Fly, by collecting fly DNA to turn some unfortunate winged creature back into a human being. This one's a crossover: Jody Van Meter reports enthusiastic reception from museums as well as entertainment operators. Consultants' Corner Ted King reports that he is currently working with Jeremy Railton of EDG to create Resorts World at Sentosa Island... Richard Ford just returned from project management consulting on the Revenge of the Mummy attraction for Universal Studios Singapore and is now providing creative and master planning development for Herschend on the long term vision for Dollywood, including a front gate hotel and rework of the park entrance... For the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority in Hampton, Virginia, economics specialist John Gerner is studying possibly future uses of Fort Monroe, a military facility that is being phased out and contains more than 100 buildings. The goal is to retain and re-use as many of the historic structures as possible. New Stuff Don Marinelli of Carnegie Mellon's ETC headquartered in Pittsburgh but with an ever increasing network of international satellite campuses, was in town to attend both IAAPA and the World Gaming Expo in the adjoining hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. At WGA he was giving a panel presentation. Get in Line ( right), a new company of recent ETC grads creatively applying interactive technology that ties in with guests' mobile phones to improve the queuing experience, reported successful temporary installations at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle and the Carnegie Mellon spring carnival. Joshua Jeffery, VP creative, showed us how the system can tie into DMX protocol to cue lighting and special effects. Doron Gazit of Air Dimensional Design is in R&D stages on a new product, Frozen Flow, a new decorative LED lighting product for special events... John Drury of Ideality is connected to a project in Phoenix - a mixed-use recreation resort that highlights green building and clean energy - still in early development stages... And now for two of my favorite things at the show: the flipbook stand, and the incredible shrinking Craig Hanna! Many thanks to Greg MacLaurin, a concept designer/special effects wizard who has given me lots of great editorial pointers over the years and one of those people who walks the whole floor at IAAPA and finds the neat things others might miss. Pic Flips, the mobile flipbook studio, takes a seven-second video of you and then in about 2 minutes turns it into an endlessly entertaining flipbook. I'm afraid that I may have interrupted more than one serious business conversation in brandishing my flipbook around the show. The item is that much more poignant of a keepsake for members of an industry closely tied to the development of cinema, as Keith James of JRA remarked. For those of us who hadn't seen Craig Hanna (left- head of Thinkwell Design) since last year, his transformation - from the big guy of the past 20 years or so, into a lean, mean, marathon running machine - was sensational. Craig took off 95 lbs and looks positively wiry - completely prepared and fit to undertake another 50 or so years of visionary industry leadership. A staffer tells us that Craig has abandoned the sit-down work mode and now operates from a standup desk fitted with a slow-walk treadmill. Go, Craig! Images(from top): 1- editor Judy rubin at the BRC Imagination Arts Elvis themed party. 2 - Jonathan Katz, courtesy Cinnabar california Inc. 3- Insecticide the Ride, courtesy Garner Holt Productions. 4- - Guests use their keypad and voices to control games on a large screen while they wait in line for a ride at Carnegie Mellon Spring Carnival 2009. The guests' avatars on screen earned points and achievements as they played during the 3 day long event. Courtesy Evil Genius Designs 5 - courtesy Craig Hanna Related: Overheard at IAAPA, Las Vegas Meet me in Las Vegas (IAAPA booth 4524) Collaborate, Design, Engage, Succeed! An Interview with Jonathan Katz Teaching Themed Entertainment : Interview with Don Marinelli
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Categories Amusement Parks, Attractions Business, Themed Design, Trade Shows Tags Design, elvis, IAAPA, TEA, vegas
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“Being a museum guy, I don't understand Las Vegas,” said Dan Moalli of Design & Production.
There is no further clue to the 'what or how' of this oneliner.
So, What? How?
Greets, Herwig

Comment By Herwig Delvaux At 11/26/2009 12:23 PM