A pair of drone shows experienced starkly contrasting fortunes over the weekend, with a spectacular event above Disneyland Paris setting a European record for the most UAVs performing at once, while another in Melbourne ended with most of the 500 craft plunging into the city’s Yarra River.
Just as Bordeaux-based drone show specialist Dronisos took its recurring aerial work for Disneyland Paris to another level with Friday’s Bastille Day choreography of 1,495 UAVs, technicians with the Australian Traffic Network (ATN) watched nearly 400 of their 500 vehicles begin to stall, waft downwards, and ultimately vanish under the waters of the Yarra in central Melbourne.
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By early Monday morning, divers said they’d recovered several hundred craft from the river, thereby vastly decreasing risks of battery chemical leakage into the water. ATN had prepared a Friday night drone show ahead of Australia’s weekend friendly soccer match against France in the run-up to Thursday’s opening of the Oz-hosted Women’s World Cup of football.
ATN – the traffic information and media services company that created its UAV choreography unit in 2022 – said it had staged “hundreds” of events in its 18-month existence without a hitch. But as Friday’s drone show progressed over Melbourne’s central business district, a still unidentified malfunction disrupted the flight program, and led to the vehicles descending into the river.
“The drones did exactly what they should’ve done with any technical glitch, and they auto-rotated and landed,” ATN’s chief operating officer Vic Lorusso told The Age. “Unfortunately, when you’re over water they auto-rotate and land into the water. Obviously it’s upsetting to us, but we’ve just got to find out the reason why it happened… That said, I’m really happy, because everyone’s safe, and that’s paramount to us.”
Awaiting identification of the ATN system’s problem, another of the company’s drone shows scheduled in Brisbane this weekend by the city’s 2032 Olympic Organizing Committee was canceled.
Dronisos, meanwhile, continues basking in the glow of its drone show component of Disneyland Paris’ Bastille Day fireworks, light, and sound performance Friday.
In addition to setting what the company called “the record for the largest drone show ever performed in Europe,” the Dronisos choreography won plaudits for its formations of Paris sites including Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge, Sacré Coeur, and the Eiffel Tower.
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Integration of the craft amid the lasers and pyrotechnics that made up the Disneyland Paris spectacle also provided something of a rebuttal to recent predictions that UAV performances are now making firework shows obsolete. Dronisos president Jean-Dominique Lauwereins called the spectacle a successful blend of disciplines and imagination.
“The Bastille Day show, showcasing 1,500 drones, results of the powerful fusion between state-of-the-art technology and highly-advanced artistic direction,” said Lauwereins. “Together with the teams at Disneyland Paris, we share a common vision: using technology to create enchanting dreams and magical experiences. This project is a big success, and we express our gratitude to the Disneyland Paris teams for their trust and collaboration!”
Image: Karl Greif/Unsplash
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