Here is a video from Tokyo Disney Sea taken during the quake. It was sent to me by Matt Ferguson. This sound system was designed by Roger Gans, Mike Shannon, myself and also Bill Platt. Also involved on the audio side were Richard Bugg, Francois Bergeron, Martin Carillo, and many others. We had strict design limits on the poles regarding weight – for wind and ….you got it. Each of the poles is retracted inside a chamber and then hydraulically expanded twice a day for day-time and night-time shows. This was the day show.
Here is a picture of the interior of one the speaker vaults. The speakers are already up and out at this point. We had different sizes of poles for different areas because some locations did not needs as many speakers. Of the poles shown in the video, only the lighter weight unit goes down – but there are 44 poles total so I have no idea about the rest.
It is worth noting that alot of time and effort was put into the emergency announce capability of the system. This was something that book the Japanese and Disney engineers kept very much in focus. The announcements that you hear on the video were done in advance and loaded on to a “360” sample playback device. It was necessary to allot 30% more time for Japanese language of an equivalent phrase in English.
We played those samples MANY times through all sorts of contingency scenarios. It was a good feeling to see it come through when it really counted.

This is one of the big poles. 21 ft total
Here are a couple of the poles during a boat rehearsal.
In the big scheme of things this is very small. I was happy to see the buildings holding up there. I wish for the safety and speedy recovery for everyone there.
6o6