Ultimate Fireworks Spectacular at Alton Towers Resort

The Jands Vista lighting and media control console again proved its flexibility and power when it provided control for this year’s ‘Ultimate Fireworks Spectacular’ event at popular UK Theme Park, Alton Towers Resort.

Celebrating the end of the Theme Park season, the annual closing event is no ordinary show – telling a unique story with an amazing amount of fireworks, lasers, ear-popping music and special effects.

Alton Towers Resort specified the Jands Vista system to provide lighting and media control for the event, for the 4th consecutive year running.

Simon Horsley, Alton Towers Resort’s Technical Manager, based his lighting design for the show around this year’s storyline, which took guests through a battle between dreams and nightmares, featuring the thrills and fear of the Resort’s most famous and iconic rides.

Simon’s dramatic lighting for the event utilised a Jands Vista console to control the rig, which featured over 150 fixtures from leading brands including Martin, Clay Paky and Robe.

In addition to the lighting, the show featured an impressive video element projected onto a water screen. The video playback system utilised a Green Hippo media server, which was controlled via a laptop PC running the same Vista v2 software as the main control desk. This element of the show was programmed by Alton Towers Resort’s Assistant Technical Manager, Dave Reynolds.

In order to synchronise the show’s lighting, video and audio elements, Simon utilised MIDI time code.

He commented: “One of the reasons we chose the Vista is because for a time-coded show, it’s so easy to set up.”

He continues: “Also, it’s effortless to create a physical layout on-screen of all the fixtures in your show. With Vista’s visual interface, I was able to pre-plot the entire show using the offline editor – leaving only the position elements needing to be programmed on-site. This saved a massive amount of time!”

Summarising the experience, Simon comments: “After using the Vista for several of our previous fireworks shows, and for our ‘The Smiler’ rollercoaster launch event last year, it was the obvious choice for this event. Once again, the technical team at Alton Towers Resort are really delighted with the outcome of the show using Vista – which helped to make it another huge success.”