The special magic of light

As we design and build our theme park projects one of the things we keep in mind is how we will light each element at night. While our budgets are not what the big boys get to play with we can still create beautiful effects that are well suited to our theme. The key is to plan ahead and place the lights carefully. I favour the warm tones to create night scenes that are inviting to our guests.

Last evening as I enjoyed Cultus Lake Adventure Park with Phoebe and two of her friends I snapped a few pictures of the park as darkness fell. While the park is beautiful in the bright sunshine a whole new level of excitement and magic is apparent at night. I love the special mood that we can create with light.

Fifty-two lanes of magic!

As we wrap up the Viking ships for Dubai Peter and I are turning our attention to the next project. It will be the world's first fully themed bowling alley at NEB's Fun World in Oshawa, Ontario. And true to our style it is going to be a very large project involving fifty-two lanes and well over four hundred lineal feet of theme work. It is going to really change the room!

The bowling alley is already a technical wonder as the owners invented and implemented a system where each lane can be switched to either have five or ten pin bowling. They already have a digital scoring system plus many other cool features. 

I posted some early concept art a while back, but an onsite visit and accurate measurements meant a tweaking of the final design. There will be some cool digital lighting effects for fun night bowling and we are also bringing the theme work through the ceiling right up to the foul line for even greater effect. The design was a collaboration between Peter and I with input from the owners to make it all work as it should.

This is going to be fun!

First OFFICIAL run

When Phoebe arrived to our place to day I called her to the shop. She happily complied as she almost always does. But today was special - it was the day we've been anticipating for a very long time. Since before she was born, almost twelve years ago I had been building on the train. A few years later she rode on the engine and cars on a couple hundred feet of track, but it was always me pushing and it was always very hard work! We made countless trips through the years and had a lot of fun but the question always was "When will the train go by itself?" And the answer always was  "We'll work on it." Building trains it seems takes a great deal of money or a great deal of time. Money has never been in abundance and time was often scarce as well. This meant the train had to wait it's turn. Today was finally the day that Phoebe would get her very first ride with me sitting in the cab of the engine beside her and not pushing. I had put the train on the track last night and hooked a riding car behind it in anticipation of the happy occasion. Four of our crew volunteered to be our passengers. The journey was short but a complete success. Now it is time to lay the rest of the track around the yard...