Disney Goes LED !

I just received an email from a good friend (a recently retired LEO) who was at Disney's EPCOT in Orlando, Florida.

He noticed that at the security check-point (where they search bags, etc.) the Disney security guard was using a Streamlight Stylus LED to look through the bags and backpacks.

Disney goes LED -- wow!

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Guess LEd`s are going mainstream now...I`m not sure about their choice of lights though. Do those have a very long run time?? Might be the guys personal light...did it have mouse ears?

Ken

I was just there last thursday. The guard was using an old beat-up Brinkmann Long-Life LED light to do the bag inspection.

On the monorail, the white interior lights were LED. In the middle of the train is a strip of lights pointed up, with a translucent white platic piece over them to diffuse the light. All you could see was a row of twenty or so bright spots of light.

The fact that some light spots were white, while others had a bluish tint told me that they were LEDs. Incandecent would all be a uniform color.

Last year there were holiday banners on each lamp post in Epcot (and many in the Magic Kingdom) that each had ~75 twinkling white LEDs. They were very high quality LEDs - bright and uniform. I estimated ~20K LEDs in these banners alone. This year the banners were gone - and all I could think of was, "man I wish I could get hold of a dozen of their retired banners!"

This year the huge Christmas tree in the Grand Floridian appeared to be lit by thousands of amber LEDs rather than the former white incandescents (we like to nose around the resorts to see the decorations).

There were several parade floats at night that had tons of LED content.

Vendor carts were overflowing with color changing LED gizmos, and some animated EL pins.

The Downtown Disney area has several bridges and other architectural structures accented with LEDs.

I think I'd like work as an "imagineer".

Disney is covered in LEDS!!!
I have spotted them everywhere.
I always thought they were ahead of the curve on lighting.
I also saw the banners and I may have a plan to get some if they were not destroyed or auctioned off as Disney does with alot of their old stuff. probably not worth takeing them apart to get the LEDS, but they would be cool.

Also next time you go to Disney bring an IR viewer \ night vision goggle with you...
I know all the rides and much of the whole park is lit in IR.
It reveals alot. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I was on the "Tower of Terror" ride this weekend. I was actually on the elevator for 15 or 20 minutes, as it has broken down with me on it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

Since I was on the ride for so long, I had the opportunity to look around quite a bit. At the front of the elevator, there were two "boards," each with around 50 or so LEDs. My guess was that these were throwing out IR for the cameras. Semiconductor B/W cameras can see in the IR pretty well, and makes for great covert viewing. They want to make sure that everybody on the ride is OK while being dropped at 9.6M/(s^2).

I didn't think about it before. But late 2002, we were at Disneyland. It was dark, I put my Sony Camcorder on Nightshot. [this bypasses the IR filter, I guess] And I looked around. The whole place looked totally different. All the IR being used around, I guess for monitoring?
Maybe next time, I'll pay more attention to it and peek around w/the Camcorder. =-)

Danno