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Electrosonic recently selected Medialon as the control
system to integrate an extensive array of AV components
in The Great American Chocolate Tour, the
newly-renovated chocolate-making tour at Hershey’s
Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The tour now
features updated content, a new sound system,
animatronic characters, innovative special effects and a
spectacular finale. Hershey’s Chocolate World is
America’s most visited corporate visitors center with
more than 3 million guests annually. At $5 million the
tour is the largest renovation in Hershey’s Chocolate
World 30 year history.
“Medialon’s graphical user interface was designed to
provide full and easy access for monitoring and
controlling various subsystems,” explains Steve Calver,
Electrosonic’s Project Manager. “One of the reasons we
selected Medialon was to meet the needs of the
operations department. They were primarily a mechanical
engineering group with little computer experience. We
knew they would be a bit overwhelmed with all the
technology we were introducing to the attraction, so we
wanted a control system that could have all the
programming flexibility we needed for a complex show
like this. Additionally, Medialon gave us the ability
to hide the complexity behind a series of
straightforward graphical pages that made start up, shut
down, operation, testing, and maintenance as simple as
possible. Medialon was a great choice, and it’s worked
out really well.”
Visitors enter the tour in the tropically-themed queue
line where they view clips on new LCD flat panels of how
cocoa beans grow in the rainforests, are harvested and
shipped to America. Once visitors board a streamlined
vehicle, from which they can see, feel and hear the
process that transforms the beans into milk chocolate,
the tour gets underway.
Visitors see the chocolate-making process in a simulated
factory environment equipped with 13 Samsung 42-inch DLP
monitors. New Panasonic 5000-lumen DLP XGA projectors
play content sourced from Electrosonic Multi-channel
standard definition MPEG players. The overhead audio
system has speakers distributed every eight feet along
the ride’s 1150-foot path. Track triggers activate
audio and animatronic cows as visitors approach in their
vehicle, coordinating onboard dialogue with the cows’
narrative and songs. Audio equipment includes Roland
recorders, Fostex 24-track audio players, Soundweb
Digital Signal Processing and Crown 8-channel amplifiers.
The highlight of The Great American Chocolate Tour is
the big video finale when the ride culminates in a
surround theater where 18-foot high curved walls display
six dynamic scenes of America enjoying Hershey’s
Products. This was accomplished using Watchout and
eight Panasonic 5000 lumen, DLP, XGA projectors.
In addition to its ease of use, Medialon was also chosen
by Electrosonic to accommodate the show producer’s
desire to create the finale using Watchout software.
“Medialon has done a great job creating the driver
interface necessary to accurately control and sync
Watchout playback with the other show devices,” says
Calver. “Since the finale was the most important
segment and was expected to be updated frequently with
new graphics, we wanted to make sure the control side of
it was user friendly, stable and accurate. Medialon
allowed us to create a graphical drop down menu of
Watchout shows available making the operations task of
configuring the control for a new Watchout show very
simple.”
Overall, Medialon has “achieved the objectives of
simplifying systems for a client used to operating a
mechanical ride and creating a graphical interface that
makes working with Watchout much easier,” Calver
concludes. “It’s a very robust and popular control
system.” |
