Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998 - 22

spiderweb made from vacuum-formed plastic, witil bOtll "live
wire" (electroluminescent strands) and fiber optics inside. All
fuese effects are controlled and powered from onboard fue float.
Each float has a molded fiberglass shell which completely
covers fue skeleton. "We carved it once, made molds from tllat,
and tllen made up four identical floats," said Lindsey. "And we
kept tlle molds, of course. We don't keep 'em here--tlley would
take up a third of fue 100- by 400-foot warehouse. It takes about
iliree weeks to tumaround a replacement piece."
The float frames were made by a company that normally
works on military contracts. lindsey indicated tlle franle: "You
know all those big machines you see on aircraft carriers to
shift around all those weapons? Big ammo carrying wagons
and such? That's what these guys make. When they were welding them up, tllere was one team on each float, and they were
betting against each other. They were fast."
The equipment requirements which necessitate the milspec franle, also mandated an enormous \\~ring harness for
each float. "Each of these floats is a house," chuckled Lindsey.
"All of the Wiring-which for lighting is all 12 gao stranded
THJ -is code. You gotta use the stranded, because anything
solid core on a float will eventually break from flexing." He
popped open the base of one of fue floats, and pointed to a
bundle of wire as thick around as an arm. "And, of course all
tllis has to be flameproof. And it nll'ns out that tllere are diffel~
ences of opinion in just what constitutes flanleproof, at least in
the case of fiber optics. We have a velY particular fire department at fue park. But of course, we need the fibers, so all of
fuem are sandWiched between the flanleproofed fiberglass
shell and Kevlar sheets."
Looking beneatll the float, he pointed to the nearly wallto-wall batteries. They are not just for powering the special effects-tlle airplane tow tug wllich makes up the first section of
each float is also electric, to keep down the noise, and was
provided by Lectro Systems. There are lline bays of heavy duty
12-volt batteries on each float-a total of forty-five batteries
on each, 180 batteries total. The batteries, and all the other
hidden components, are mounted on pull out drawers hidden
behind the fiberglass panels. Spaced around the walls of the
warehouse, interspersed \vifu a few old floats and one lone
snail float from the now-retired Electric Light Parade (waiting
to go to the Snlithsonian), are the chargers. "The floats zip out
of here \vith 13 volts on the electrical system, and they come
creeping back, four shows later, at about 11 volts. We have to
charge them every night," Lindsey said.
But of course, the whole float doesn't run on one voltage.
"We run mostly 24V, but it drops to 12V for the grain of wheat
lamps, (hidden around the float inside translucent berries,
bells, and trumpets) and on up to 1IOV AC for the ETC [control console)."

By tlle time you add up the mil-spec franle, the fiberglass scenelY, all the equipment, a/ld the batteries, these floats get a
teeny bit heavy-according to Lindsey, about 70,000 Ibs.
apiece. "We had to completely resurface the parade route with
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concrete. The street used to be asphalt. These floats are so
heavy that they would've sunk right down into it. And the floats
aren't even on tires, these are on two foot industrial casters."
With all that moving weight, safety was a big concern. "With
the brakes full on, it takes about fifteen feet to stop," Lindsay
said, "but there are also stop switches scattered all over the
float, and even dead-man SWitches. If one of those is used, the
float stops right /1010." "And everybody falls over," Gale
chuckled. "When we first started running the show, we had
some internlittent power problems, and once, one of the floats
stopped absolutely dead. They had to tow it back here, with the
tow truck." (Acnlally another airplane tow nlg.)
But minor things such as floats sinking into the street
(one is reminded of the notorious opening day of Disneyland
in 1955, when women's high heels sank into the asphalt) were
not the only reason to replace the street surface. Various and
sundry cables needed to be run; fiber optics for the DMX networks laid out up and down the performance route. "To my
knowledge," said Lindsey, "we have the biggest DMX setup
around. I love DMX-we use it to control all sorts of tllings
around the park, not just for Light Magic. We use nine DMX
networks-I call them universes-just for Light Magic." DMX
aside, there were other cables to be run, like the circuitlY for
the lighting funn-es not on the floats-eighty-four Vari*Lite
VL6s, and 672 Thomas Weafuer PARs (336 of them with
Wybron Aquaranl color changers)-the seven 70l11m film
projectors, the seventy-four fixed confetti cannons, and the
1,000 strobes hidden here and there, as well as thousands of
feet of audio feeds and speaker cables. Cables also had to be
run for the position sensors under the street which are absolutely essential to the show-not just for lighting focuses, but
for the 70mm film projectors, which shoot onto a retractable
screen that scrolls up from a hidden slot at the center of the
float. Audience on one side of the float sees a front projected
image, the other side sees a rear projection.

Each different aspect of the show is controlled by a different
control system. At the top level is DECS, the Disneyland Entertainment Control System, a proprietary controller that runs the
audio systems for the performance-and for the park too:
thirty-two zones for the whole park, three channels per zone.
Seven of those zones are used for Light Magic. A pair of
Wholehog 2 control consoles run all the lighting for the show
(except for the floats' internal systems.)
How do all these systems tie together so that one go button starts the whole tiling? "The audio runs the show," Gale responded. "SMPTE time code on the audio track sends to the
Wholehog, which sends DMX down the fiber optics line to an
interface, which then sends it on short runs to the LP [light
pipe] dimmers and color changers on copper. The fixed confetti cannons and the more conventional [and non-proprietaIy) fiber optics on Main Street also get DMX. The mini
strobes run off a controller we built in-house. The floats get
sent MIDI (again, from the audio track) via a radio signal, to
run the onboard processor wllich then sends to the fiber op-

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998