Story

The Cirque Du Soleil theater at DisneySprings was originally built in the late 1990’s.  The 1,578 seat theater housed La Noubashow for nearly 20 years.  DPR wascontracted to manage the facility demolition including structural steel,electrical, fire alarm and fire sprinklers. Once the demolition phase was complete, facility construction began.

The main theater upgrades included anew structural steel package for the stage, emergency and house lighting,carpet replacements, aisle handrails, completely new paint and above stagestructural modifications to support the new show.

Structural steel and metal framingmodifications were required on the exterior walls and parapets as well.  The building was outfitted with a smokeventilation system including roof vents and backstage louvers. 

Back of house upgrades tot the loungearea, dressing rooms and showers, wardrobe rooms, warm up rooms, physio-therapyroom, under stage pit raised floors.  Newstorage rooms were constructed on the grid level at the top of thebuilding.  Control booth upgrades to theexhaust system serving the 15 new projectors installed. 

The electrical systems and fire alarmupgrades serving all house, show and emergency lighting was installed.  Integrated Show System Testing (ISST) wascompleted as part of a Certificate of Occupancy as required by the AHJ. 

Two sets of new stairs wereconstructed at the main entrance to the lobby to compensate for egressrequirements.  Main lobby upgrades,remodeled interior and exterior restrooms. Both the service and passenger elevators were upgraded as well.

All fire sprinklers were reviewed andinspected.  DPR engaged a rope accesscompany to gain access to sprinkler heads not accessible by traditionalmeans.  Heads were cleaned, documented andreviewed with Reedy Creek fire inspectors.

Stage reconstruction required demolitionof approximately 50% of the original steel as well as retractable floorequipment and steel.  The stage used tohouse five stage lifts that are utilized to move performers and stage sets frombeneath the stage.  Three of the liftswere demolished and two were refurbished in place (refurbishment byothers).  DPR utilized laser scanningtechnology, 3D printing and mapping in order to level out the existing stagesteel. 

This innovation and use of technologyproved to be essential in building the stage as flat and level aspossible.  Performers and artists arevery sensitive to changes in elevation and “soft spots” in the stage floor.  See below for more information.

WHY SHOUD DPR WIN AN AWARD FOR THISPROJECT?

As one of the premier technicalbuilders in the country, DPR employed and leveraged internal and externalsubject matter experts to build components to the project as safely,efficiently and within tolerance.  Conceptswere considered, brainstorming ensued and solutions were implemented.  A true team approach deployed by the DPRproject team and collaborated with its trade partners, Disney and Cirque DuSoleil. 

DPR was faced with a challenge.  In early meetings with a Cirque Du Soleilproducers, DPR asked a question.   Whatis the most critical activity for this project in your eyes?  The response was immediate.  The stage. The stage needed to be one solid surface, no undulations and completelyflat.  We learned that performers areextremely sensitive to the floor that they are performing on.

The original stage was constructed inthe mid-90’s with the rest of the facility. The remaining steel was far from flat and consistent across the 4,500square foot area.  So, we new we had theultimate challenge.  How to we make thestage as flat as possible using original steel beams and channels that istwisted, not level and at differing elevations. The elevations varied by up to 1.25” from the highest beam to the lowest.   As the team brainstormed ideas, our missionwas clear:  build it flat and build itsolid.

On top of the steel, 3 layers of ¾”fire treated plywood would have to be used. Two layers were fire treated with structural properties.  The third layer, also fire retardant, was the“finish layer”.  Installing fire treatedplywood in layers and making it flat and level was also part of the equationand challenge.

The team settled on the fact thatshimming the stage was the only way to accomplish this.  But how do you shim steel that istwisted.  Per the structural engineer, wehad to maintain 100% surface contact between the steel and the wood. So how toyou cut wood in so many different dimensions where some dimensions tapered to0”. 

3D print them.  That was the answer.  We can’t cut something down, so we have tobuild it up to create the flatness.  Weengaged our internal laser scanning team to take scans, create heat maps and reviewthe data. Great, now we have a scan which tells us where our high and lowpoints are, but how to we convert that into information that a 3D printer canutilize.  And, who would we tap toprovide this to us?  one team member hadworked with a vendor on a past project at Disney.  He was confident they could do this.  A few phone calls, meetings and plansdeveloped.  We were able to convert thedata into useful information, thanks to our subject matter experts and thevendor.

Producing the shims required eachpiece to be numbered which corresponded to a map that the installers could layout by.  Each piece was 4” wide and 6”long.   Thousands of shims wereused.  The material we used was suggestedby the vendor and approved by the structural engineer.  Once the shims were produced, we went to workinstalling them. 

Along the way, the owner and show teamcontinued to add steel to the structure below, causing deflection.  We noticed this during elevation spot checksthat we were short by ¼” to ½”.  At thatpoint, we scanned again, produced the heat map, converted the data and producedproper shims to make up the difference.  If we did this again, we would do it the same exact way.  The only thing we would have done is waiteduntil the owner was 100% sure they were not going to require additionalsteel.  Schedules were maintained and wewere able to provide the surface that they were looking for.

After 4 months of rehearsals andtraining on the stage floor, there have been no complaints and the owner is100% satisfied with the construction of the stage.  This technological and innovative approachhas spawned other uses for structural issues outside of building a stage out ofsteel.  Our teams are now looking at 3Dprinting as a way to possibly avoid costly re-construction activities anddelays in schedules.