sound in parades

[K8screen]

I have always been intrigued by the fact that wherever I have stood on a parade route, I can only hear one piece of sound, although the people at the head of the parade are obviously hearing different music from those at the end. What I mean is, there must be some points where adjacent speakers are playing different bits of music, but I have never heard an overlap. Are there points where this is obvious, if not, why not? Its very impressive anyway!

[btharvey]

When you stand in front of Cinderella's Castle -- especially near the main street entrance to the "roundabout" -- you'll sometimes be able to hear two different tracks.

[Buttercup]

I asked about this yeeeears ago and someone gave me interesting information about how the floats are timed to little sensors in the ground so when they drive over them, their music is fired off in that vicinity. I'm sure they'll be around shortly to explain it better than I can!

[Victor Kelly]

RFID pucks are imbedded in the parade route. Also the floats have onboard sound as well as sound coming from the speakers along the parade route.

They had a brief show and tell on Modern Marvels when they did a show on WDW.

Now, DACS is where I would love to go and see.

[2Epcot]

Another thing about the parade music, it always has natural breaks. The music is divided into segments that helps with the transition as the floats move. Not sure what the exact length is, but is seems to be pretty standard for most of the parades.

[Mufasa]

RFID pucks are imbedded in the parade route. Also the floats have onboard sound as well as sound coming from the speakers along the parade route.

The "pucks" did not use RFID (it wasn't that fancy- pretty much they were embedded magnets that an onboard sensor would track/read and radio back to Parade Central where they could calculate speed/position) and they really haven't been used since early 2006.

In 2007 a system pioneered at Disneyland called DECS (Disney Entertainment Control System) is now adopted as the global standard at Disney Parks for show control.

Basically things are now controlled through RF transmissions. With something like a parade you have wireless modems along the route (on things like light poles for instance) which help break up and define the parade route into control zones- at a place like the MK at WDW it is set up with around 33 zones which allow for real time communication/control and that keeps the audio (which is digitally stored onboard the floats) in sync with the wayside playback system and also trigger appropriate effects cues.

The floats themselves also have a counter which tracks wheel revolutions that is used to help feed position data back (there was some discussion about moving to a GPS based tracking system at one point but the technology upgrades usually get phased in as the older technology needs replacing).

[Buttercup]

So, just clarify this for me then.

Let's say Ariel is on the float in Spectromagic (it's the only thing I can think of right now!). There is a line that she says during the parade that goes "Oh Flounder, look at all these people!".

So, if that is pre-recorded and coming from her on-board audio, essentially the actress playing Ariel is going to lip sync the words "Oh Flounder, look at all these people" 33 times along the route as her on-board audio repeats itself, correct? Because there are 33 segments to the parade where it repeats itself?

[Main Street Jim]

Little OT here, but...

Kevin! Good to see you're still around here as well

[Mufasa]

So, if that is pre-recorded and coming from her on-board audio, essentially the actress playing Ariel is going to lip sync the words "Oh Flounder, look at all these people" 33 times along the route as her on-board audio repeats itself, correct? Because there are 33 segments to the parade where it repeats itself?

No- the audio is not necessarily directly tied or segmented with each control zone. There can be multiple overlapping loops, various bridges/vamps or even alternate ending sequences that can be called up for a particular zone depending on conditions that can get pretty complicated (for example if there were a stalled float up ahead which was causing a delay or if the parade had to be shortened because of a sudden downpour)

And to expand on the OP's question about how the audio never seems to overlap- it is because there are a couple of elements to parade audio. There is the underliner- which is the base musical theme that loops continually and is played through the speakers along the parade route.

The underliner might have a few variations to it as well that for instance could be tied into a particular group of floats. Let's say that you had a parade based on Fantasmic- and you reached the point where they start exploring Mickey's nightmare and had a series of villain floats- the background music and mood should change so as the floats go by the background audio that plays would change accordingly.

It has reached a point where it is possible to directly address an individual speaker along the parade route.

The earliest parades back in the 1970s had around 6-7 parade zones and even today a lot of parades generally kind of break down into around 6-7 performance blocks that basically overlay the control zones.

Having more control zones allow for more flexibility in designing location specific triggered events or things like better musical transitions.

[K8screen]

Thanks Mufasa and everyone else. Not sure I understood ALL of it, but I am very impressed, by your knowledge and by the complexity of the system.

[CU Tiger]

Most people would just understand that it happens because of Disney Magic.

[2Epcot]

No- the audio is not necessarily directly tied or segmented with each control zone. There can be multiple overlapping loops, various bridges/vamps or even alternate ending sequences that can be called up for a particular zone depending on conditions that can get pretty complicated (for example if there were a stalled float up ahead which was causing a delay or if the parade had to be shortened because of a sudden downpour)

And to expand on the OP's question about how the audio never seems to overlap- it is because there are a couple of elements to parade audio. There is the underliner- which is the base musical theme that loops continually and is played through the speakers along the parade route.

The underliner might have a few variations to it as well that for instance could be tied into a particular group of floats. Let's say that you had a parade based on Fantasmic- and you reached the point where they start exploring Mickey's nightmare and had a series of villain floats- the background music and mood should change so as the floats go by the background audio that plays would change accordingly.

Thanks for the information Mufasa. Very impressed with flexibility and variations built into the music tracks.