Furious videos at Port Aventura
30-08-2007
The worldpremiere of the first wing rider accelerator coaster Furius Baco, the Intamin Launch Coaster
with seats beside the track, causes a worldwide sensation. The impressive ride with up to 135 km/h is
such a mind blowing experience, everybody wants to share with their friends at home.
PortAventura made the decision early in the planning process of the ride, to install an onride video
system from Ridercam GmbH, the leading company in this new business.
36 cameras have been installed, 12 in each of the three trains in strong collaboration with Intamin and
Port Aventura having the fastest onride video system in the world.
"We work together with all the different rollercoaster manufactures during the planning process. This
makes it possible to have custom designed installations for every coaster, which are fully integrated in
the design of the trains,“ says Jens Scheberg, which is the chief technical officer of Ridercam GmbH.
Several people from the industry have been in PortAventura to see RIDERCAM® in action. The most asked question was: "Where are the cameras?“
But people waiting in row are prepared before they start their own ride. In the queueline they are
informed about RIDERCAM® and the possibility, to buy their personal DVD of the ride afterwards.
Each video, showing two people at the same time, is saved as an about 80 MB MPEGII file, which is
recorded by an high end camera in a resolution of 720 x 576 pixel. MPEGII format allows a high quality
video with superb sound of the screaming people in the seats. Within the station the file transfer of the
whole train is done within less than a minute.
This means 12 cameras for each of the three trains, coming simultaneously in the station, transferring
about 1 Gigabyte of data together. No other onride video system handels so much data, as
RIDERCAM® does. Ridercam GmbH has developed a unique wireless file transfer system, which
allows to submit such capacious amount of data in a short time period.
But PortAventura not only wanted Furius Baco to have RIDERCAM®. They ordered as well for their
famous wooden coaster Stampida a RIDERCAM®-system.
There were some reasons, why RIDERCAM® was choosen, and not one of the other companies from
the USA or Netherland: First of all Ridercam GmbH is the only company, which is able to operate so
many cameras in one coaster at the same time. Talking about Stampida this means 48 cameras in 4
trains and 2.6 Gigabyte of data, when two trains of the racing coaster are together in the station.
Ridercam GmbH is as well the first company to install an onride video system in a wooden
rollercoaster. This is special, because wooden coasters are normally much rougher than steel
rollercoaster. For the technical equipment, this means very special preparation to make sure, that it
gets no damage and works promptly.
RIDERCAM® is easy to operate for the parks and that is mostly important for the decision, which onride
video system a park should choose. With the start of the first test rides of a day, RIDERCAM® starts
fully autonomous. More than 20 hours of operation is possible, without charging the batteries and
even that works by itself during the night. When switching off the ride in the evening, RIDERCAM®
stops automatically. Compared to other companies no other is able to operate their onride video
system for such a long time during the day.
At PortAventura the crowds run the RIDERCAM®-DVD store immediately after the ride. Everybody
wants to see their video and it is shown within short clips of about 20 seconds for each camera. It takes
only about 3 minutes from the moment you order the DVD, until you get your own personalised copy.
This shows a waterproof printed DVD-Label with a picture of the passengers to avoid a mistake for the
staff.
Carlo Görtjes is astonished: "We sell much more DVD´s than we ever expected. In PortAventura
Lagotronics operates both RIDERCAM®-systems on a revenue shared basis. But of course parks are
also able to operate a RIDERCAM® system on their own. We charge 16,50 Euro per video and bring up
a new dimension in the retail revenue of Port Aventura."
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Theme parks are able to put different content on the DVD as well. Videos of their sponsors, a clip of the
park itself or anything else is possible. Even the guests are able to extract their personal ride at home
on their computer, and that is a big hit: Over 200 onride videos of Furius Baco have been uploaded at
Youtube.com, the famous video website, within the first 2 months after the grand opening. This is an
absolute free marketing tool for Port Aventura and every other parks, who installs a RIDERCAM®-
system.
Currently RIDERCAM® and Lagotronics work closely together with several theme parks and
manufactures about new installations for the future. The two proven systems at PortAventura have
caused a highly interest in the leisure industry. And as there are new inventions to come at
RIDERCAM®, it is sure that this company will lead the market also in the future.
Furius Baco - Camera #1
Furius Baco - Camera #2
Furius Baco - Camera #3
Furius Baco - Camera #4
Furius Baco - Server-Room #1
Furius Baco - Server-Room #2
Furius Baco - Shop #1
Furius Baco - Shop #2
Stampida - Camera #1
Stampida - Camera #2
Complete
article(*.pdf)
FuriusB.-Camera#1 3072x2304 (*.jpg)
FuriusB.-Camera#2 3072x2304 (*.jpg)
FuriusB.-Camera#3 2820x2220 (*.jpg)
FuriusB.-Camera#4 3072x2304 (*.jpg)
FuriusB.-Server#1 3072x2304 (*.jpg)
FuriusB.-Server#2 2304x3072 (*.jpg)
FuriusB.-Shop#1 3072x2304 (*.jpg)
FuriusB.-Shop#2 3072x2304 (*.jpg)
Stampida-Camera#1 2820x2220 (*.jpg)
Stampida-Camera#2 3072x2304 (*.jpg)
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