Parades...how do they work?

[spaceship_earth]

I have always wondered how the parade units in the various Disney parades (Spectromagic, etc) are controlled. Are they following a preprogrammed route? is someone actually steering them from somewhere? I have no idea, hopefully someone does.

Thanks

 

[Spaced Out Dude]

I have always wondered how the parade units in the various Disney parades (Spectromagic, etc) are controlled. Are they following a preprogrammed route? is someone actually steering them from somewhere? I have no idea, hopefully someone does.

Thanks

I think there is someone in the parade units. Right at the bottom driving it.

 

[skiddles]

no drivers

there was a show on the the travel channel or something on this. It is all done with computers and little microchips embedded in the graound. very high tech stuff.

 

[imagineersrock]

there was a show on the the travel channel or something on this. It is all done with computers and little microchips embedded in the graound. very high tech stuff.

There are definitely drivers. Period.

...I think I know which Travel Channel special you are referring to, and that technology they were discussing had to deal with tracking where the floats were at and that the audio was in sync.

 

[HauntedPirate]

Take the "Keys to the Kingdom" tour for more information.

 

[brkgnews]

... little microchips ...

... There are definitely drivers. Period...

Correct. There are drivers responsible for getting the floats from here to there, but the microhip "pucks" are embedded into the ground to both help snynchronize music and such, but I believe they also help to notify the driver if he/she is going too fast or slow, etc.

 

[imagineersrock]

Take the "Keys to the Kingdom" tour for more information.

Or if you don't want to spend the extra money..... Just watch a parade. :lol:


<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v121/cowzilla11/whosthatguy.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"></a>
I wonder who that guy is..? :animwink:

(Picture courtesy of wbboy29 from another thread on these forums.)

 

[murdock]

he,s a pirate i think ha ha

 

[WDWparadetech1]

Yes there are Drivers. The "Pucks" are there to control music transfer and to control special effects and float speed . Yes they do notify us when something is wrong. But not speed that is programmed by the computer. They also tell the parade manager where the floats are at all times. If you ahve any other questions feel free to PM me.

 

[WDWparadetech1]

Or if you don't want to spend the extra money..... Just watch a parade. :lol:



I wonder who that guy is..? :animwink:

(Picture courtesy of wbboy29 from another thread on these forums.)

and that guy is the driver for that float.

 

[mikeymouse]

watch "backstage disney" for MSEP. it shows inside some of the old floats and tells you how its all done. dc-torrents.com has it for download.

 

[lightboy]

The "pucks" report the float's positions to the Parade Central tech. To my knowledge, that is ALL they do. He has a computer screen with the entire parade route, with all pertinent floats displayed. I believe that would be all DDCT floats, and only the larger Spectro floats. From there, he can see where the parade is visually...in addition to three video screens showing the parade route. One of the tracks for the music is also the DTMF track (like timecode, but an audio track of basically telephone dialing tones that work as timecode). This DTMF track gets sent out from Parade Central through the Castle antennas. Each float picks up this RF timecode track, which allows it to sync to the park audio via its internal audio computer. Each float has its own computer that plays the music, it just takes direction from the timecode telling it where it should be.

The "pucks" do nothing more than reporting on a computer screen in Parade Central, they used to do more....but that's a different story. Parade managers will never get any parade direction from the "pucks"...except through the tech who can call over any problems that he forsees.

Hope I helped...

 

[JimboJones123]

Are there any Knucklepucks?

 

[rbrower]

Yeah, there are drivers!

 

[WDWparadetech1]

The "pucks" report the float's positions to the Parade Central tech. To my knowledge, that is ALL they do. He has a computer screen with the entire parade route, with all pertinent floats displayed. I believe that would be all DDCT floats, and only the larger Spectro floats. From there, he can see where the parade is visually...in addition to three video screens showing the parade route. One of the tracks for the music is also the DTMF track (like timecode, but an audio track of basically telephone dialing tones that work as timecode). This DTMF track gets sent out from Parade Central through the Castle antennas. Each float picks up this RF timecode track, which allows it to sync to the park audio via its internal audio computer. Each float has its own computer that plays the music, it just takes direction from the timecode telling it where it should be.

The "pucks" do nothing more than reporting on a computer screen in Parade Central, they used to do more....but that's a different story. Parade managers will never get any parade direction from the "pucks"...except through the tech who can call over any problems that he forsees.

Hope I helped...

everything you jsut said is true. They also are used for float speed control. The main computers tell the flaot how fast to go.

 

[joanna71985]

The parade drivers rock. I hope to be one someday.

 

[colliera]

Parade Control

Parade Control is in the Utilidors in a very tiny room. One person runs it and it is mostly automatic. The person is there to take care of things that don't happen or things that aren't suppose to happen.

The Backstage Magic tour visits there. The time I was there he had to call the Cinderalla float and tell the driver to slow down as the gap between that float and the rest of the parade was too great. "Cindy is always too fast.", he commented. They use the display more than the video cameras to check the parade. I asked about that and he did swing a castle mounted camera down Mainstreet toward the train station. "Don't move that camera too much - it tends to get stuck."

Audio was stored on EPROMS but might now be on flash memory cards now if there has been any upgrades. Some of the spires of the castle are radio antennas that transmit audio to the floats. The audio is moved through zones along with the floats that have specific music.

Unless things have changed the most amazing thing was ALL park parades were controlled from that tiny room. Makes sense when you think about the parade times. None of them overlap.

 

[miles1]

When we were there in February 2005, one of the floats in the evening parade veered off course right in front of the Main St. train station. It came within a few feet of the crowd and then stopped, scaring quite few people. In short order a main showed up on a black tractor and towed it for the rest of the parade route. Do all the floats have a driver or just the larger ones?

 

[Chape19714]

They all have drivers, and to my knowledge, only the SADCT parade has the puck system. Spectro's audio is controlled by a radio being broadcast of the castle to the route. According to Backstage Magic.