Park Vault attended the IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attraction) Asian Attraction Expo (AAE) 2017 at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Center in Singapore. The dramatic location of the hotel along with the incredible Gardens by the Bay behind provided a great venue for the show and many innovations were seen on the show floor.
The Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Convention Center.
Two of the Supertrees. Those were designed to be vertical gardens and some can be visited using the OCBC Skyway.
The Flower Dome, one of the two conservatories at the Gardens by the Bay.
The show official dates were June 11th-16th with an IAAPA Institute for Attraction Managers kicking things off from June 11th to the 14th along with a Safety Safety Institute.
For the show floor, things got underway with the opening ceremony at the IAAPA theater where the performers and characters from Universal Studios Singapore provided a fun distraction while the IAAPA officials spoke about things happening in the Asia-Pacific region. Incredible facts such as the fact the Asia-Pacific region had 450 million visitors to its attractions was said. That is more than any other region and a clear sign of why the region is expanding so much. Chairman, Greg Hale and the IAAPA CEO, Paul Nolan were the hosts, and June Ko, president of the Asia-Pacific region spoke to attendees in the crowd about their expectations for this year’s show. Christian Martin from Triotech, for example, spoke about how the show is a great opportunity to find new ideas.
Mr. Greg Hale, IAAPA 2017 Chairman to the Board, during his presentation.
Mr. Paul Nolan, IAAPA CEO, when he was talking about upcoming events in the Asia-Pacific region.
An important guest was Ms. Low Yen King, Singapore’s senior parliamentary secretary, ministry of trade and industry, and ministry of education. She attended the opening ceremony and then took part in a tour of the show floor, with stops at two press conferences. Ms. Low Yen King spoke about the fact that tourism represented 4% of Singapore GDP and it is still growing.
Ms. Low Yen King during her presentation.
The first press conference was the Jack Rouse Associates (JRA) booth where they spoke about a project that just opened at Singapore Science Centre. An existing wing of the centre was renovated with one of the world’s largest mirror maze and The Mind’s Eye. The Mind’s Eye is a new exhibition where illusions and how things based on how humans perceive them are shown. Adrian FisherDesign Ltd. was tasked with designing the 270 square meters (2906 square feet) mirror maze and spoke about the process.
The JRA booth with the new concept arts shown.
People from JRA and the Singapore Science Centre talking about the project.
The second press conference was at the Triotech booth. The Montreal, QC based company always has a big presence at the IAAPA shows and this year was no exception. The big news announced was that Triotech was given the contract to bring the popular Korean cartoon “Larva” to life in the first ever land dedicated to the IP. Larva started off in South Korea as a slapstick humor style cartoon where a big Yellow Larva and his friend Red go through an adventure where the target originally was adults. But, it took off, and it now has a huge following around the world, with the shows shown in over 40 countries. Jeju Shinhwa World theme park is currently under construction in warm and sunny Jeju Island, and Larva will be one of the anchor.
The Larva characters. This image appears courtesy of Triotech. Triotech
Triotech will provide an interactive walkthrough where historical aspects of mankind and South Korea will be showcased. The second attraction will be an interactive dark ride with custom vehicles that look like they have been cobbled together from discarded materials. The setting for the dark ride will be a cartoon tour of New York, a very exotic location for an Asian theme park.
The show floor this year was divided in two due to the unique space available at the Sands Convention Center. The IAAPA theater and education sessions were held on the 3rd floor in the ballrooms. The show floor was 50% larger and with 30% more companies than the last time they visited Singapore for the show.
A look at one of the showfloor aisle. Notice the standards signs for most booths that used flags to show where the exhibitor was from.
The booth with the central location was Proslide Technnology from Ottawa, ON. They are one of the largest waterpark supplier in the world and they were showing off new models on their unique “model park”. Since a few years, Proslide has been creating accurate scale models of their slides and placing them on a large table in the center of their booth. Three new models were shown:
The PowerRiver, a brand new high capacity raft slide.
TornadoWALL 60/TornadoWALL 60 Hybrid , an incredible feat of engineering as getting the speed of the raft right heading off the first Wall was quite difficult. Park Vault predict this slide will be among those nominated for an IAAPA Brass Ring award this year. The new slide is on the right and it was integrated with a brightly colored Tornado 60.
Here you can see a larger version of the thrilling FlyingSaucer 30, using 6 passenger CloverWHEEL rafts. That is the orange slide and the blue slide is a brand new style of Tornado using 32 feet funnels and the 6 passenger CloverWHEEL rafts.
In addition to those three thrilling slides, the RideHouse has taken over the market by storm. Installations ranging from the smaller RideHouse 100 to the large 500 serie are appearing around the world.
The huge OctoKraken Racer slide appeared again.
DOF Robotics showed off a new style of Virtual Reality simulator. As you can see, it is quite compact and built inside a small room and provides a great experience. The Hurricane 360 is quite flexible capacity wise and can be used with either VR or a flat screen in the room.
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