Italy’s Gardaland Theme Park Provides Thrills and Entertainment with Symetrix

Gardaland adds flexibility and future-proofing to AV system that helps them to tell the story of history, geography, space and fantasy.

CI Staff Leave a Comment
Italy’s Gardaland Theme Park Provides Thrills and Entertainment with Symetrix

Located near the southeast banks of Italy’s Garda Lake, the Gardaland Theme Park is one of the oldest and most loved theme parks in the country.

Opened in 1975, Gardaland’s theme is inspired by the world of history, geography, space, and fantasy with many rides to match.

With over 3 million visitors each year, eight roller coasters (five rated as “extreme” by the Roller Coaster Data Base), three different water rides, over two dozen other rides, and a variety of attractions and shows, Gardaland satisfies the needs of a diverse public from early childhood and adolescence to young adults and families.

Related: Inside the Minds of the Disney Tech Team

Despite the park’s love by locals and tourists alike, Gardaland’s audio system had significant problems. Wear and tear of the components in place and the lack of flexibility of the signal distribution system posed issues that couldn’t be resolved with the system in use.

It became very difficult for the technicians to evaluate the state of the audio signals in the various areas of the park. Constant failures, little to no flexibility, and non-existent ability to monitor remotely led Gardaland’s AV technicians to seek a better solution.

Led by Eurolab SRL managing director Alberto Colombo, in collaboration with Sisme SPA sound engineer Simone Santarelli, Gardaland was presented with a new solution to provide audio distribution, processing, monitoring, and real-time system control throughout the entire 50-acre park.

Combining years of audio and control system experience with products from Symetrix gave Gardaland the confidence that they would have a world-class solution for their park.

Gardaland

Inside the Gardaland Installation

At the core of the system, fiber optic lines link seven technical rooms in various parts of the park and are used to carry sixteen tracks of synchronized audio throughout the park.

A Symetrix Radius NX 12×8 processor with a 4-channel analog input expansion card brings those sixteen channels of audio into the system, provides audio processing as needed, and transmits the audio over the park’s Dante network.

Symetrix xOut interfaces (seven xOut 4 and one xOut 12) in the park’s various technical rooms convert the Dante network audio back to analog audio for the 40 channels of zone amplification.

Designed exclusively for use with Dante-enabled Symetrix DSP units, the xOut 4 and xOut 12 are configured using Symetrix Composer software.

The Composer Software allows Gardaland’s technicians to quickly configure the entire audio network from anywhere in the park and SymVue control interfaces provide immediate control over all input and output processing, network routing, and paging.

The fully custom SymVue interface provides Gardaland’s AV Technicians with simple and intuitive system control as well as the ability to have the features of the interface modified or expanded as needed.

Symetrix’s web-based event scheduler provides Gardaland with automatic activation of each zone’s audio when the park opens in the morning and automatically deactivates each zone when the park closes.

Park staff can access the web-based event scheduler with a web browser from any phone, tablet, or computer to make temporary or permanent schedule adjustments as needed.

Creating a large, flexible system with simple management and monitoring is always a challenge. When that system is spread out over 50 acres of roller coasters, water rides, shopping, dining, and entertainment venues, the challenge becomes enormous.

Combining powerful, flexible products from Symetrix with the expertise of Eurolab and Sisme made it possible to quickly and easily design and install a parkwide solution for Gardaland that’s reliable, simple to manage both centrally and remotely throughout the park, and easy to expand.

“The system has allowed us to obtain a truly optimal result,” said Santarelli.

Gardaland Park’s AV technicians now have flexibility in their audio routing, the ability to remotely monitor any part of the system, and peace of mind that their system will reliably perform every day for years to come.

The audio quality in all areas of the over 2,150,000 square foot park has significantly improved and as the park and attractions continue to expand, the new system in place is ready to adapt to the upcoming additions.

“We are very happy with the result,” said Santarelli.

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!