On the 25th April, Golden Princess left the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone and sailed to Southampton, the home of P&O, from where she later set sail on her maiden voyage to Barcelona. She will be based in Europe throughout the summer, before sailing the Eastern Caribbean in the autumn. The main lounge stage on board the Grand class vessel features a four deck high flytower, orchestra pit, large side stage areas and substage area with stage elevators. Many land-based theatres would be lucky to have the facilities provided. A major feature of the new ship is much improved personnel access in the flytower for maintenance of the rigging systems and the large amount of lighting equipment installed in the space. As part of the design process, Stage Technologies developed TanJent (patent pending), an innovative solution to guiding the flybars throughout the full travel of the bar. The flying system uses a variation of Stage Technologies’ proven BigTow winches with patented zero-fleet technology. In addition to the flying system the main lounge on board Golden Princess includes two stage elevators, with infill covers, a series of cross stage tracks with rigid chain drive for moving stage wagons, a safety curtain, lighting trusses, curtain tracks, rain curtain and Austrian curtain. The automation system uses the latest version of Stage Technologies’ Acrobat console, together with Maxis processing power. The recently introduced Solo is also provided to provide portable handheld control of any axis. The aft lounge features a Juggler console controlling an assortment of curtain tracks, cross stage tracks with rigid chain drive and stage elevators in this flexible cabaret venue. The small mid ships lounge features a wall mounted version of the Solo controlling curtain tracks and a rotating thrust stage.http://www.stagetech.comimage -
