Santa’s Kingdom
| Location & Year: |
Melbourne 2005 (Australia) |
| Client Sector: |
Corporate |
| Services Provided: |
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EPG…making all your Christmases white
Boasting the reputation of being Australia’s largest ever Christmas production show, Santa’s Kingdom was an indoor Winter Wonderland. Essentially a theme park developed on Greenfield site, a six thousand square metre (6000 sq. m) within the Melbourne Exhibition Centre (MEC), Santa’s Kingdom was a Christmas experience like no other. Attracting over eight thousand (8000) visitors per day over a thirty (30) day period this three dimensional reality included a one hundred foot (100ft) indoor snow slide, ice skating rink, magic forest and best of all…real snow.
Our team played an integral role assisting the event organisers with numerous functions throughout the event, which involved the delivery of complex temporary event overlay & infrastructure with a significant technical component and short timelines for the build and decommission of the site.
Our event management & operations role involved significant stakeholder engagement between the event organisers, the venue owner, existing venue suppliers, nominated event suppliers and local authorities. Additionally, we managed all contractors in relation to procurement, installation, maintenance and health & safety, as well as fulfilling the workforce planning & recruitment obligations by recruiting all the event logistics and technical crew positions and managing the site induction process of all site staff and visitors.
The management of pedestrian crowdflows for a diverse range of people and age groups was a key challenge for our team during the event, as we had to ensure that visitor schedules were maintained and plans were in place to cater for congestion within the site at different intervals to ensure a positive experience for all. Given the site was not purpose built and conducive to ice conditions or climate controlled activity, management and maintenance of the ice rink and indoor snow slide was also a challenge, with our tema putting plans in place to monitor temperature fluctuation on site, with the greatest impact being increases in site temperature due to radiant heat from the increased pedestrian flow on site.