Flying Vampirates and Rock & Roll are just some of the many spectacles that will excite and entertain you at Dracula’s Cabaret Restaurant on the Gold Coast.
The Neumann families’ talent for providing the Gold Coast with a great night out, has led their new production Vampirates to go where theatre restaurant has never gone before. Not satisfied with performing on stage and around the audience for 2009, they now take to the skies!
As part of Dracula’s five million dollar upgrade of their Gold Coast Cabaret Restaurant, completed in early 2009, the task was set to design, install and commission a customised actor flying system that could elevate the show (literally) to new heights. With such a complicated set of requirements, Draculas technical manager John Taylor came to Specialised Stage for this special performance design.
The design had to meet the needs of a carefully created concept. The performer needed to move around the room on a predetermined path with the ability to move up and down and rotate through 360 degrees at any speed they required for the performance. During the entire performance the safety of the performer and the audience had to be ensured. Combined with a prerequisite that the system should be hidden from the audience as much as possible, the task was complicated from the very beginning. The end result is the SSE Flycoaster.
The first hurdle was finding a track system that could handle the loads generated by a person moving in all 3 axis simultaneously. After evaluating a number of products on the market SSE chose Bomac Altrac which gave impressive statistics for the task. The Monorail extruded aluminium track could be bent to handle the radius bends required and is rated for a safe working load of 1000kg in a 2.3m span. Due to the specific operational control requirements and potential vector forces generated while in use, the spans were reduced to maximise the safety factor for the system. After inspection of the existing roof structure it was found that the existing roof structure did not provide enough mounting points for the 18m track. SSE fabricated a steel I-Beam support superstructure for the track system that could support the track at the required intervals and mounted this to the existing structure. To hide the system from the audience the entire track was anodised black which helps it blend smoothly into the roof.
Running on the track are 2 custom track carriages with 6 wheels each that helps to reduce the running noise of the carriages. Each carriage is rated for a working load limit of 500kg. From the carriage is a rotating harness attachment system which allows the performer to rotate through 360 degrees.
The winch system is composed of two separate Variable Speed Drive winches to handle horizontal movement around the track as well as vertical movement of the actor. These winch cables are handled by custom built runners and pulley systems designed by SSE to ensure that the cables do not jam or run slack at any time during operation.
Dave ‘Kamakazi’ Kume is the high-flying hard-rocker that soars his way over the audience with his guitar rocking out the Wings track “Live and let die”. The performance harness and rigging allows Dave to spin vertically while the actor attachment system allows Dave to spin horizontally. His acrobatic skill at playing inverted power chords while spinning 5 meters over the heads of the audience, is something to be seen. During the show the system moves at a relatively sedate speed of 0.5m/s but the system is capable of varying speeds up to 1m/s or more.
John Taylor, Technical Manager for Dracula’s said, "The build of the fly coaster, along with the new mezzanine stages really lets us create a cleaner looking flying stunt. The ability to load and unload the actor out of sight from the audience adds that extra wow factor when he is all of a sudden upside down in the middle of the room.
The fly coaster is also well hidden in the roof and moves with smooth fluid motion.
The other great thing is that the design allows it to grow as our shows do, allowing for faster and trickier stunts in the future."
John Taylor and his technical team are integral to the performance, with the actors movements on the fly coaster controlled from the remote operation controls located in the Bio Box at the side of stage. This gives a great vantage point to synchronise the artist and technician cues as well as maintaining the high levels of communication essential to the safe use of the fly coaster.
With the show running 6 nights a week the maintenance of the system is obviously of extreme importance. SSE supplied a full user manual with all the daily checks and maintenance that the venue technicians perform as well as providing annual maintenance and inspection of the system to ensure that it runs perfectly every show.