Company News: Page (1) of 1 - 09/06/06

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Electrosonic helps Hershey sweeten its Great American Chocolate Tour
Company installs New AV technology into popular Chocolate Making Tour Chocolate Town, USA is sweeter than ever.  Electrosonic recently provided all the AV and control systems for The Great American Chocolate Tour, the newly-renovate 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 it?s the largest renovation in Hershey?s Chocolate World 30 year history,? says Mark Thomas, Project Producer with On Track Themes Inc, which produced the new chocolate making tour.

Visitors enter the tour in the tropically themed queue line where they view clips of how cocoa beans grow in the rainforests, are harvested and shipped to America.  The new LCD flat panels installed by Electrosonic provide a modern appeal to the experience.




Once visitors board a streamlined vehicle the factory tour gets underway.  They can see, feel and hear the process that transforms the beans into milk chocolate.  A trio of animatronic cows provide narration and song declaring  ?It?s all about the milk.?

Visitors see the chocolate-making process in a simulated factory environment, which is equipped with 13 Samsung 42-inch DLP monitors installed by Electrosonic.  New Panasonic 5000-lumen DLP XGA projectors are also on site and play content sourced from Electrosonic Multi-channel standard definition MPEG players.

Electrosonic also installed a new overhead audio system with speakers distributed every eight feet along the ride?s 1150? path.  Track triggers were added to activate audio and animatronic figures as visitors approach in their vehicle, coordinating onboard dialogue with the cows? narrative.  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 its big, new video finale, designed by Jerome Sirlin of Jerome Sirlin Design.  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.
 
Electrosonic was challenged to wrap the video around the S-curved walls while keeping the projectors hidden from view, yet accessible to technicians.  ?This was one of the more complicated projection geometries we?ve done recently. An existing structural column and multiple curved surfaces required extensive 3D AutoCAD projection studies to make this work,? said Bryan Hinckley, Electrosonic?s Design Consulting Business Manager.

Electrosonic selected Medialon as the control system to integrate all of the AV components.  ?Medialon?s graphical user interface was designed to provide full and easy access for monitoring and controlling of various subsystems,? notes Steve Calver, Electrosonic?s Project Manager.  ?To expedite show programming, Electrosonic provided four rack mounted 19? LCD monitors, which could display both the show control computer and the Watchout signals via a KVM switch.  This provided complete flexibility for simultaneous systems programming and confidence monitoring.  The multiple monitors saved a great deal of time during commissioning and reduced post-opening maintenance requirements.?

In choosing Electrosonic for the project On Track Productions sought ?a company whose expertise is project management,? says Mark Thomas who has teamed with Electrosonic on previous jobs.  ?One of the great things about Electrosonic is how they make adjustments on the fly.  When a new creative idea needs to be implemented, Electrosonic comes up with a solution. They do a lot of problem-solving on their own.?

Gary Goddard, who conceived the new Great American Chocolate Tour ride, was the executive producer and creative director for the project.

With offices in Minneapolis, Burbank, Orlando, New York, London, Helsinki and the Far East, Electrosonic has a 40-year history in the audio-video market with design, installation, manufacturing and staffing capabilities.  The company has designed and installed complex systems at hundreds of well-known sites around the world.

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