WATCHOUT shows take visitors around the world

PortAventura World is located on the Costa Dorada, a key tourist destination in Spain. The leisure complex clocked up 3,650,000 visitors during 2016. making it not only one of the main attractions in Spain but also one of the top amusement parks in Europe. The latest addition to the park is Ferrari Land, seven hectares that focus on the car company’s illustrious Formula 1 racing history. Ferrari Land opened in April 2017 and is the first Ferrari-inspired amusement park in Europe.

Ruybesa Global Technologies, based in Madrid, was selected as the lead provider of integrated AV systems, video-mapping and sound systems at Ferrari Land. With almost 40-years’ experience as a solution provider for the retail and leisure industries, the project team took the attraction’s tight timeline in their stride: just four months to plan, program and install a comprehensive multi-level system.

Besides the rides, which include Europe’s tallest and fastest rollercoaster, Ferrari Land gives visitors the chance to shadow a Ferrari as it drives around landmarks around the world. The “Flying Dreams” ride features immersive visuals and a mind-boggling 47-zone soundtrack. Ruybesa chose Dataton’s WATCHOUT multi-display software to provide the content and also to draw visitors into the brand experience with a mix of holograms, projection-mapping and videos.

“The content is designed to submerge the visitor in each zone,” says Juan Giraldo, managing director at IberCOMM-TEC, the Dataton distributor in Spain. “WATCHOUT gave the designers the freedom to get creative with the content using different display technologies, knowing that it would retain its original quality and work together as a whole.”

The multiple WATCHOUT shows run on rack-mounted Dataton WATCHMAX media servers, each equipped with six video outputs. The content plays out on both Christie Digital 35K projectors and Barco 4K projectors. A Medialon ShowController system synchronizes the mapping zones at the experience.

“Ferrari Land gives visitors a taste of the emotions of Formula 1 that until now only the drivers could experience,” said Juan Giraldo. “The attractions run non-stop during opening hours which naturally puts high demands on the equipment and system as a whole. WATCHOUT with heavy-duty WATCHMAX media servers is a rock-solid solution for this kind of installation.”