Canadian LD Chris Moylan has been designing for TUI Cruises for about five years and has operated as chief lighting designer for all TUI Cruises shows, as well as complete entertainment lighting systems designer for the Mein Schiff 3 and 4.

As TUI produces all its shows in house, very modular multifaceted theatre stages have been designed, integrating products from established manufacturers, such as MA Lighting consoles, coolux media servers, Martin and Robe lights.

Regarding new liners, TUI Cruises’ Mein Schiff 5 is scheduled to be ready in 2016, followed by a new ship each year until Mein Schiff 8.

Torsten Hirche, sound designer and technical director for TUI Cruises Entertainment Berlin, comments: “Cruise liner companies are constantly searching for the ‘new wow effect’, to differentiate them from competitors, and another important factor is multi-functionality. Space on ships is limited so designers often try to ensure a single space has multiple functions. For example, our Klanghaus room enables guests to enjoy live classical music with the audio characteristics of an opera house, thanks to its integrated audio modelling system. A few hours later, there will be a theatre show with live actors, in the evening it can become a lounge or movie theatre, and the next morning host a presentation of the next destination – all in one room!

“We consider ourselves to be at the forefront when it comes to our theatres’ lighting, video, sound and kinetics technologies and have chosen Martin Audio speakers (fitted in all key areas across the 15 decks on TUI’s two newest ships – Mein Schiff 3 and 4 and with the marine debut of MLA systems), MC2 amplifiers, XTA processing and DiGiCo consoles.”

For NED, all-in-one presentation switcher/scalers are another popular item for spaces that handle a wide variety of events, and there’s also an increase in the use of AV transports via IP such as Dante. The decreasing cost of using fibre-based technologies is also becoming very important as the ships grow in size and required bandwidth.

Alan Edwards, principal audio design consultant at NED adds: “Now that newer protocols have been developed for faster networks, such as Audinate’s Dante, bidirectional audio distribution to and from and between venues becomes more viable. Control of AV devices, whether remotely or locally using WiFi devices, is among the more recent implementations we see today.”

Paolo Campanelli, executive technical-artistic specialist with Costa Crociere, states that, as far as Costa is concerned, investment in AV technology is definitely increasing.