Universal Studios Japan to Debut "World's First Next Generation Parade" in 2018

Universal Studios Japan recently announced a large new project for 2018, a brand new nighttime parade named Universal Spectacle Night Parade - Best of Hollywood.  The park is calling it the "world's first next-generation parade" due to the technical complexities of the production, along with the high level of special effects.

The parade will be based around four of Universal's biggest block busters: the Harry Potter series, Minions, Jurassic World and Transformers.

© Universal Studios Japan

A bit of each of those franchises can be seen in this promotional art released by the park.  The parade will the first appearance of the Transofrmers characters at Universal Studios Japan, and the first time that the Harry Potter films will be used in a daily parade.

"Park guests will be completely enveloped and fully immersed in this brand new and continually changing entertainment, which far surpasses the traditional theme park parade experience.  The impossible is made possible with perfect synchronization of projection mapping, which completely cover the surroundings, floats incorporating dynamic movements, high quality film lighting, sweeping cinematic score and performances by live entertainers through the use of “Show Orchestration,” an outstanding technology specially developed by Universal Creative."

Some of that text, which is quoted from the official press release, sounds a tad confusing, but basically the park is going to use projection mapping on buildings along the parade route and on the physical floats themselves.  Wireless technology will be used to time the location of the floats and orchestrate all audio and visual elements.  A footnote on the release also mentions that the parade will use "transforming robots," perhaps a nod to the Transformers section of the parade.

Sounds like quite a production, I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out next year.