|
How One Young Engineer Made the Best Out of the Worst Times
 In 2008, Josh Davis was fresh out of college and faced the daunting task of establishing a career as an attractions designer just as the worldwide economy spiraled into recession. But armed with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, he combined a tireless work ethic, an insatiable desire to learn, and a positive mental attitude to demonstrate how a young designer can overcome challenges and begin to establish himself during trying times.
When Davis graduated from of Cal Poly (California Polytechnic) in June 2008, he signed a contract with Burbank, California’s Thinkwell Design (www.thinkwelldesign.com) to work on a new park in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Everything seemed to be going his way, but not for long. “The economy fell and it impacted Abu Dhabi, and the jobs were frozen, and I was laid off,” he says. “When you’re in formal education, they never say anything about layoffs and what to do if it happens.”
He made a good reputation for himself in six months at Thinkwell, and that helped him catch on with Attraction Services of Valencia, California (www.attractionservices.com), in April 2009, 12 weeks after being laid off. He was promoted to project manager in three months, and then came his big break: Attraction Services was preparing to implement its design work on the “Lights, Camera, Action” attraction at Universal Studios Singapore, and instead of remaining comfortable stateside, Davis pushed Ron Griffin and Melissa Thompson, CEO and president of Attraction Services, respectively, to let him enter the hectic, heavy-workload environment of a new park under construction.
“I practically begged them to send me to Singapore and told them I was more concerned with field experience than even with salary,” he says. “Designing in a box is somewhat dangerous because you need to be out in the field seeing what it takes to make your equipment work. You learn how things should be done and what not to do from the mistakes of others.” He explains how designs require modifications when they leave a controlled shop environment and are placed in the field, and seeing this firsthand made him a better engineer.
Davis says the 16-hour workdays didn’t really bother him, and he was energized by the teamwork among vendors involved in the project: “They all really helped one another out and pulled together, sharing equipment, tools, and even personnel, to make things happen because they realized we were all in the same boat!”
Following the opening of the park in March, he returned to the United States and took a break to recuperate and see family and friends.
Along the way, he says he’s received some great mentoring from the Thinkwell staff, from Griffin and Thompson, and especially from Dave Graul, vice president of engineering for Attraction Services. He’s taken time to read about legendary attraction and coaster designers like LaMarcus Thompson, John Miller, and John Allen, and engaged in e-mail exchanges with coaster gurus Larry Chickola at Six Flags and Monty Jasper at Cedar Fair.
Davis notes he still wants to design coasters, but until that opportunity comes he’s going to learn as much as he can about every aspect of attraction design, and adds, “Pushing your limits is great because you find out you can do much more than you thought you could.”
What Is Augmented Reality?
 If you find the concepts of both virtual reality and live animation to be exciting, but are a little confused by exactly what they are and where their differences lie, you probably aren’t going to be comforted to know there’s now a third exciting concept on the scene: augmented reality (AR).
Let’s try to reduce the confusion and distinguish the three in simplified terms. Live animation involves a person assuming the role of an animated character on a screen (see “The Revolution Will Be Animated” in the March 2010 FUNWORLD). The animated character mimics the exact motions and facial expressions of a person, but other objects and creatures do not react to the character in real time. With virtual reality, a people usually wear a helmet that displays a computergenerated world with which they can interact, but this setting is isolated from the “real world.”
In augmented reality, computer-generated images are integrated with the real world. The user interacts with these images, and the images respond to the user’s actions in real time. For instance, users could look down and see a virtual spider crawling on their hands that reacts instantaneously to their movements.
One company leading the way in augmented reality is Paris-based Total Immersion, which recently rolled out a new version of its D’Fusion software, which that eliminates the need for programming to integrate objects into an augmented reality scenario.
“A few years ago, augmented reality involved a lot of scripting languages, and taking objects and integrating them into a solution,” says Greg Davis, general manager of Total Immersion in North America. “We’ve brought this to the point where the interface is much more simplified and we don’t have to write complex code to integrate objects into a scenario and build interactivity into it.”
Davis says there are three components to augmented reality: recognition, in which the user is recognized by the system; tracking, where the movements of that user are detected and captured; and rendering, in which computer-generated objects and creatures interact with the user.
 “AR can be experienced through a stage show,” Davis says. “You go into a theater, and backstage there’s a performer; in the theater, there’s a projection of the performer. Like [Disney’s] ‘Turtle Talk,’ there’s a camera on the audience. The performer is against a green screen, and you can put him in a forest or on Mars. You can pull people from the audience and have a real-time conversation, and he can have, say, a virtual dog pop up, and the dog will have the person’s dog’s name on the dog’s collar.”
Beyond amusement parks, Davis sees applications for AR at museums and science centers: “There is an auditory and visual level, but this is experiential learning. There’s an advantage to being able to go to a museum and have kinesthetic learning, where you would be able to [interact] with a dinosaur versus just reading about it.”
Davis believes AR is here to stay and Total Immersion will help lead the way. “There were approximately 300 AR projects [worldwide] last year, and we did 270 of them,” he notes. “It’s a vast creative canvas at this point, and this is just the beginning. It offers a high degree of interactivity and merging the fantasy with the physical.” Some amazing AR videos can be viewed at www.timmersion.com.
Enormous Retractable Roof Solves Problems for Waterpark
 During the recent period of growth for indoor waterparks, a couple challenges have confronted designers and operators: dehumidification of the airspace is constantly needed, along with the removal of chloramines, a byproduct of disinfection created by chlorine; and many guests would prefer to be outside on warm, sunny days.
Now, OpenAire of Oakville, Ontario, Canada (www.openaire.com), is addressing both of these issues in the construction of what it says is the largest retractable aluminum dome in the world—278 feet in diameter and 86 feet high—at the Royal Marine Waterpark in Donetsk, Ukraine, scheduled to open in fall 2011.
Initial plans called for the park to have a steel/polycarbonate structure and a fixed dome, but a representative from one of the project’s partners found out about OpenAire’s capabilities and reached out. “The amount of maintenance required on steel because of corrosion, as opposed to aluminum, which doesn’t corrode—that really attracted them to us,” says Mark Albertine, president of OpenAire. “They also liked the fact they could open the dome because they wanted something unique.”
 Albertine tells FUNWORLD the city of Donetsk is a partner in the project, along with private investors, and is supplying the land because it wants more leisure options available in the city. He says Donetsk, along with Poland, is hosting the 2012 European soccer championships and wants the project completed by that time.
The retractable roof not only allows pool guests to enjoy the outdoors on fair-weather days, but “they don’t have to run the dehumidification system when the roof is open, so you don’t need any mechanical system to bring fresh air in,” Albertine says. “And it’s not just a savings on the mechanical equipment, but energy savings, as well, because it’s not operating as often.” He acknowledges there will be additional heating costs in winter but points out those will be more than made up for by the energy savings.
When asked about the sturdiness of the aluminum versus steel, Albertine responds, “We design to the requirements of building codes to hold up to wind, cold, snow load, and seismic events.” He notes aluminum does have structural limits, but it’s no problem for this size facility. “You won’t see aluminum in a large stadium, like the roof of Cowboys Stadium [in Arlington, Texas],” he says. “Once you get over a large enough span, aluminum reaches its limit. But for 40,000- to 60,000- square-foot interior waterparks, you’re fine, and we’ve given them a 10-year warranty, labor included.”
As for cost, Albertine says OpenAire is competitive, even though the raw material cost is 10 percent to 15 percent more. “We don’t build a lot of these aluminum domes over tennis courts because they don’t have the corrosion, but it’s just such a huge difference in maintenance for a waterpark.”
In Memoriam: Son’s Dream Realized in FEC
 January 20, 2010, was a special day for Leslie Miller of Nassau, Bahamas. Yes, it certainly had meaning for him as the opening day of Mario’s Bowling and Entertainment Center (www.mariosbowling.com), his new 80,000-squarefoot FEC, but the significance went far beyond that: Jan. 20 was the birthday of his son Mario, the center’s namesake.
About 10 years ago, after graduating college, Mario was visiting North Carolina one weekend and happened upon a new bowling center he fancied; he returned home and told his family he really wanted to build one in Nassau. He went on the Internet and researched bowling alleys, and wherever he traveled he took photos of them to create a pictorial collage.
Unfortunately, it was a dream he would never see fulfilled.
On June 22, 2002, shortly after his father was elected to the Bahamian parliament and became Minister of Trade and Industry, Mario was brutally murdered. Leslie Miller determined he wasn’t going to allow his son’s dream to die with him. “At the funeral, I made the promise that I was going to complete his dream,” Miller says.
So he set out on the long road to making the FEC happen. He selected U.S. Bowling of Chino, California, to help put the center together. “We liked the tenacity of the ownership of the company—people who worked in the industry and decided to go on their own and compete with the majors,” Miller says. “They have great expertise and experience and have really helped us with everything.”
The 50-lane, $10 million center has many special amenities, including a 15-foot video screen over the bowling lanes, three 25-foot screens in the dining room, an arcade with more than 85 games, a playground with a merry-goround and swings, a restaurant that seats 300, an ice cream parlor, a pizzeria, four party rooms, and a private club. Also, a 35,000-square-foot roller skating rink stands adjacent to the center. A special section with four VIP lanes is named after famous Bahamian entertainer Sidney Poitier. “We just took pieces from some great bowling centers and put it all together in Mario’s,” says Miller.
He notes the FEC’s family-centric philosophy; unruly behavior won’t be tolerated. “If you use profanity once, you’re out for a month; twice, you’re out for three months, and there will be no third time,” Miller says. “We have cameras throughout. Our primary concern is the safety of our patrons.”
Most of Mario’s guests are locals, but the center is trying to attract tourists from the major local resorts such as Atlantis, Sandals, and Breezes.
Miller says he thinks his son would be proud of the way his dream was accomplished. “But I’d give it all up in a second to have him back,” he adds. “Actually, his two sisters run Mario’s. Leslia does food and beverage, and Yasmine does marketing and promotions. Montgomery, my son, handles finance.” He hopes it will kindle a dream in someone else, just like Mario.
Contact News Editor Keith Miller at kmiller@IAAPA.org.
|
