Circus Circus’s high-tech theme park

Circus Circus Enterprises, Inc., one of the largest and most profitable gaming organizations in the United States, recently opened an indoor high-tech theme park in its new Las Vegas hotel, casino and entertainment center, called Luxor Las Vegas.

The theme park, created by The Trumbull Company, Inc. (TCI), of Lenox, MA, marks a departure for Circus Circus from its profitable but lower-tech forms of entertainment; i.e., gambling, games, musical revues and live shows.

An entertainment megastore. The company, which has invested $50 million in the project, is promoting the site as a prototype for future indoor urban entertainment centers. It is comprised of three highly themed film attractions set inside a 30-story, 2,562-room, pyramid-shaped hotel, casino and entertainment complex. A low-tech “Nile ride,” which follows the outer perimeter of the pyramid base, and a museum housing a full-scale reproduction of King Tutankhamen’s tomb are other attractions in the park.

Circus Circus has also developed a 100,000 square-foot casino, seven themed restaurants, a 1,100-seat theater for live productions, themed retail shops and Virtualand, a 18,000-square foot Sega USA video arcade with networked racing games, motion-based movie rides and other arcade games.

Boomers are big business. The idea of developing Luxor and high-tech attractions was formulated by Circus Circus in response to what they identified as changing demographics and customers’ expectations for quality entertainment.

The company operates four hotel-casinos including Excalibur and Circus Circus, two casinos, and two theme parks in Nevada. Bill Paulos, VP and general manager of Luxor Las Vegas, says the company’s research shows that today’s Las Vegas visitors are seeking a more sophisticated entertainment experience, and that high-tech rides create a more urban entertainment environment with broader appeal.

“We’re looking at the baby boomers — people who have teenage children,” Paulos says. “They’re more affluent. That’s who most of the people coming to Vegas are. It’s a much higher-end customer” than it used to be.

A COMPLEX STORYLINE FOR BROAD APPEAL

To develop the sophisticated, high-tech attractions, Circus Circus brought in Douglas Trumbull, a special photographic effects expert with a distinguished career in the film business, and his company TCI, which developed, among other attractions, Back to the Future — The Ride motion-platform rides in Universal’s Florida and California theme parks.

TCI fabricated a complex story line to complement Luxor’s thematic setting as the site of a vast archeological dig in Egypt. The trilogy of high-tech attractions are themed “The Secrets of the Luxor Pyramid.”

The attractions present three episodes in a tale about the discovery of an ancient advanced civilization and the struggle of four people to exploit the temple’s powers for good and evil. The attractions (or episodes, as they are called) chronologically explore the past, present and future of the civilization. In creating the story, TCI was “trying for the widest audience possible,” says Arish Fyzee, codirector of the Trumbull attractions.

The attractions were developed as a trilogy. But as Fyzee noted, due to the kind of traffic in a hotel, visitors may not have time to go on them all or in order. A series of preshows before each attraction familiarizes the audience with the story and the characters.

“In Search of the Obelisk.” Episode One, titled “In Search of the Obelisk,” is a “swashbuckling, Indiana Jones-style” simulator ride, according to Fyzee. “It’s got a lot of action,” he says. “There’s an immediate conflict and you race right into it.” Because this is the first in the series, this show has the most extensive preshows, though the simulator ride lasts about four minutes.

This episode contains six ride areas called Ridefilm Theaters, which include a bay with a 15-passenger motion-based simulator, a 180-degree, spherically-curved screen and six-channel digital surround sound. A seventh theater is a static bay for handicapped visitors. For the ride, TCI modified the model that it had developed for the “Back to the Future” rides from multiple simulator units in one ride area to individual bays and screens for each vehicle. TCI hopes the new ride film has greater impact.

The film was developed using Trumbull’s patented VistaVision technology. VistaVision captures 48 frames per second (vs. 24 fps for traditional exhibition format). By shooting more frames per second, the image quality is of significantly higher resolution and higher definition. This film is also shot with a fisheye lens and then projected onto the 180-degree screen for a wraparound image.

“Luxor Live.” Episode Two, titled “Luxor Live,” is a parody of a live talk show. This attraction accommodates 350 audience members in an auditorium that resembles a live talk show stage. The 17-minute multimedia presentation combines rear-projected film produced in Showscan, a computer-generated 3D film projected at 48 fps onto a giant screen, several large, multi-image video projection screens, a series of physical effects and a live actor.

Showscan — also patented — is a 70mm, high-speed, high-resolution film process invented by Trumbull in 1974. Images are photographed and projected at 60 frames per second. (Trumbull was presented with a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the spring of 1993 for the concept behind Showscan.)

“Theater of Time.” The final episode, titled “Theater of Time,” is a 15-minute, high-resolution VistaVision film projected at 48 fps onto a 70-feet by 35-feet curved vertical screen. The 350-seat theater is raked at a 45-degree angle, making it the steepest theater ever built, according to TCI. In addition to its 10-channel digital stereo sound system, each of the seats have transducers in the seat backs and floor to create physical shockwave effects. The overall effect of the attraction is intended to be somewhere between a movie and a ride.

THE TRUMBULL TOUCH FOR IDEAS USING FILM

At the core of the attraction is “technology and film art,” says Fyzee. “Film is really the base of all these attractions…. We wanted to see how far we could work film into it — providing people with entertainment they have never seen before and which is outside of what they usually expect from film.”

For Trumbull and Fyzee, the Luxor project represented a chance to try out some new ideas for creating immersive audience entertainment. Aside from Episode One, which is a modified version of technology used in Back to the Future — The Ride, the attractions are the first of their kind.

Film and technology at the core. TCI claims the film is one of the most digitally intensive ever made, using digital technologies throughout virtually every stage of production. The attractions make use of three central components — live action, motion control photography of miniatures and computer-generated imagery. All production was done by TCI, with the exception of the computer-generated imagery from Kleiser/Walczak Construction Company based in Los Angeles.

TCI’s headquarters house a complete movie studio, including stages, screening facilities and a simulation theater, as well as a film laboratory, art department, editing facilities, and commissary and production offices. The studio is a fully integrated filmmaking facility with state-of-the-art computer technology for all phases of project development.

Trumbull’s career path has been one of innovation and experimentation. His involvement in the high-tech entertainment business began in Hollywood in the 1960s. His list of film credits includes work as a special photographic effects supervisor for 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, Close Encounters of the Third Kind as well as Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In addition, Trumball was also the writer and director of Silent Running and a visual effects designer for Blade Runner.

Eventually, his desire to stretch the boundaries of film experience led to exploring ways technology could be combined with film to create powerful experiences. In 1973, Trumbull formed the Future General Corp., a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, to develop innovative film techniques. While at Future General, he created the first movie ride by combining 35mm film and a flight simulator motion platform. Trumbull holds 11 U.S. patents (with two pending) that have applications in the field of entertainment.

Trumbull founded TCI in 1992 to develop and produce film attractions, focusing on simulation rides and other special-venue films, including large format and 3D films. TCI also provides consulting and creative services for the entertainment and amusement industries.

Fyzee, codirector of the Luxor project, has worked with Trumbull at TCI for more than four years. He worked as the line producer and project manager for Back to the Future — The Ride, and directed a special-effects movie ride entitled Muggo! for Sega Enterprises, Ltd. Fyzee began his career producing and directing documentary films on jazz.

URBAN ENTERTAINMENT OF THE FUTURE?

More than 200,000 served. So far, Circus Circus says the draw of the new complex has been tremendous. In the first 15 days of business, the company claims more than 200,000 visitors have been inside the pyramid. (No figures were available for the rides.) Although the company had no estimates on how many people would purchase tickets for the high-tech attractions on an annual basis, it anticipates more than 11 million people will visit the Luxor in its first year.

A plus of high-tech attractions is the number of people that they can host an hour (and tickets that can be sold). At full capacity, Episodes Two and Three can each accommodate 1,000 and Episode One 1,200 people an hour, according to Paulos. At $4 per ticket for Episodes Two and Three, and $5 for Episode One, a steady stream of customers over time would provide a lucrative source of revenue.

Uncertainty is exciting. With Luxor, both Circus Circus and TCI are dabbling in the uncharted waters of high-tech entertainment. Circus Circus appears to be doing many things right with Luxor — hiring talented developers as well as developing a highly themed site, high-quality productions and surrounding attractions that are a proven draw. But, as both parties are aware, there are no formulas or guarantees for success in the young and unproven industry. Perhaps it’s because of this uncertainty that Circus Circus is adopting a wait-and-see attitude on Luxor before signing on to any future projects involving high-tech entertainment, despite its stated commitment to technology.

As Fyzee sees it, it is this combination of uncertainty and excitement about creating something new that draws people to the technology. “Clients want something that they haven’t seen before,” he says. “The movie business always wants the fifth and sixth versions of something, not something they haven’t seen before…. There’s an opportunity to define what you want in this business. It’s a wide open field.”

Amy Johns