Christie's RGB pure laser projector, the D4K40-RGB, has been installed at the Legoland Windsor Resort in the UK.
With almost 2.5m annual visitors the park regularly evolves its offering and the Christie D4K40-RGB is a key part of the technology set-up for the resort’s newest attraction, The Flight of the Sky Lion.
The Flight of the Sky Lion is the UK’s first ‘flying theatre’ ride and is the main attraction in Legoland’s new £20 million ($27M USD) imaginary land ‘Mythica: World of Mythical Creatures’. Inspired by the ideas of children, the focal point is the Sky Lion that is created out of 685,530 Lego bricks.
The ride itself stands 25m (82 feet) tall and visitors are transported below the Sky Lion’s wing to Mythica, where Lego creatures, such as the two-headed Hydra and Fire and Ice Bird come to life. The adventure is projected onto a 20m (65 feet) high concave screen, and the gondola, in which the audience sits, is capable of a 30-degree swing, 23-degree pitch and a few degrees sideways movement. The ride was created by Brogent Technologies.
Merlin Entertainments, Legoland’s parent company, commissioned Brogent, a provider of media-based attractions, to create the Windsor ride incorporating interactive AR elements with a combined creative and educational philosophy. The ride is encased in a 20m x 20m (65x65 foot) spherical dome which has a cut-out at the top through which content is projected onto the concave screen.
Stefan Rothaug, marketing and sales, Brogent Technologies, explains how the D4K40-RGB became the chosen projector for the ride: “It was clear from the design of the dome that we needed a single projector solution, it was all we had room for. As such we needed the best possible unit we could find, and that turned out to be the Christie D4K40-RGB. With rides operating 10 plus hours a day, and almost 365 days a year, maintenance costs can be considerable but with laser there are no costly lamp changes every two to three months. It was our first time using laser projection and it won’t be our last.”
During the design and specification phase of the project, Brogent was able to draw on the help of Christie Professional Services to help Brogent with modelling lifetime costs for various projection systems as well as calculating total number of lumens required for the dome space.