The 16 freely rotatable and vertically moving LED panels are located in front of the curved windows in the atrium. During performances, these so-called “blades” form an LED surface measuring 21 m x 7 m, which can be used to display shows and films. The special feature is that the blades can rotate vertically around their own axis. When the ship docks in a port, the panels are rotated outward. This allows videos to also be enjoyed from the port.
When the video wall is not needed, it can be stowed in the stage and ceiling. To do this, the “blades” are rotated and moved into the ceiling and floor. The so-called “cover panels” close the hatches in the stage floor and can be walked on when locked This means that the entire stage floor in front of the windows can be used again.
Spur-of-the moment ideas are often the best
Expectations for Waagner-Biro Stage Systems were high right from the start. “I can still remember sitting at the kickoff meeting at the Meyer Turku shipyard with our first designs and trying to understand exactly what our customer’s requirements were,” says Karl Schreder, design engineer at Waagner-Biro Stage Systems.
“When Mr Raser, the senior project manager who was sitting next to me at the meeting, mentioned the idea of adding a panel to close the stage opening, I asked myself at the time – how is all this going to work out with a 900 mm stage height?”
It became a little too tight but CCL design was able to adjust the height to 1000mm and make the stage shape slight larger and then all fit.
At first, so-called “bomb bay doors” were planned for closing the stage opening. Later it was determined that we could turn the backside of the blades into performance floor. This allowed the blade to be lowered with the LED surface downward and locked into place in the floor, without the necessity of doors or hatches. The back of the LED Blades would just become the floor.
The fact that it was actually possible to implement this spur-of-the-moment idea after an intensive design study resulted in a significant system upgrade.