Enhancing The Story Of Niagara Falls With X‑Effects^® Projectors

Niagara Takes Flight is Ontario's first flying-theatre attraction located inside Table Rock Centre in Niagara Falls, Canada. The experience combines aerial drone cinematography, motion simulation, and cultural interpretation, offering a new way for visitors to engage with the natural wonder of Niagara Falls and its heritage. Mulvey & Banani Lighting, a specialist lighting design consultancy, developed and integrated a dynamic lighting system—featuring Rosco X-Effects LED HO RGBW projectors—to enhance the immersive storytelling throughout the space. Below, the firm's Vice President, Alan McIntosh, explains how X-Effects helped bring their visual concept to life.

The flying-theatre attraction sends riders soaring above the Niagara River corridor, providing a unique perspective on the iconic location. Suspended by gondola seating before a massive 17-metre domed screen and surrounded by wind, mist, and scent effects, guests experience a vivid, multisensory journey filmed across all four seasons. The experience begins in a series of pre-show rooms that introduce the region’s geological, cultural, and human stories, each supported by a carefully integrated lighting design that enhances the surrounding audiovisual elements.

Creating Water Effects Inside The Waterfall Room

Visitors first pass through Eons of Erosion and The Ancestors Room, where lighting subtly reinforces the digital environments and storytelling. The largest pre-show space, the Waterfall Room, focuses on the human and industrial legacy of the Falls. Here, the lighting team worked to complement the complex video installation by using Rosco X-Effects projectors to animate the perimeter bulkhead, supporting the flowing motion of the media and helping to convey the dynamic story of Niagara Falls.

X‑Effects fixtures create realistic water effects across the bulkhead surrounding the video screen inside the Waterfall Room.

Matching X‑Effects Projections With The Video Content

The story of Niagara Falls cannot be told without water. While the lighting approach might appear simple at first glance, the system needed enough range and flexibility to support and propel the narrative. To achieve the desired effects, the team selected the colour-mixing X-Effect RGBW projectors, which offered the ability to finely tune output and shift colour to match the video content.

X-Effects RGBW fixtures illuminate the bulkhead in different tones to complement the
audiovisual content.

This flexibility allowed the lighting to reinforce the emotion, mood, and movement conveyed throughout the media experience. Careful coordination with the show control, audiovisual systems, and surrounding hardware ensured the lighting integrated seamlessly, maintaining visual continuity and supporting the complexity of the overall environment. 

X-Effects projections on the bulkhead reinforce the flowing motion of the media content.

Precisely Shaping Light to Trace the Bulkhead’s Form

The team utilized twelve carefully integrated X-Effects projectors with 70-degree lenses. After testing and troubleshooting, the final selection combined a #33607 Irregular Strands gobo—kept in a static position to follow the flow of the bulkhead—with a slowly rotating Standard Dynamic Effects Glass gobo supplied with the fixtures. 

Tests performed by Mulvey & Banani Lighting show a water effect created by projecting light through the edges of two rotating Dynamic X-Effects Glass gobos, mounted off center from the optical path.

The fixtures were suspended from the structure between the video screens. Close attention was paid to coordinating the exact location of each projector to achieve optimal throw and consistent distribution along the bulkhead, whose undulating form added both visual interest and complexity.

X-Effects fixtures were installed on the ceiling structure to provide consistent illumination
across the bulkhead.

The team created customized “half-moon” shutters from magnetic sheet to precisely trace the contours of the bulkhead, enhancing the sculptural effect of the lighting. Care was taken to ensure there was no interference or unwanted reflections from the curved, dynamic surfaces of the video screens.

Many thanks to Alan McIntosh for sharing this wonderful story with us.

If you’re in the area, be sure to experience Niagara Takes Flight and see the immersive lighting design by Mulvey & Banani Lighting featuring X-Effects projectors.

To learn more about Mulvey & Banani Lighting’s work, visit their website mbii.com/lighting or follow @mulveyandbananilighting on Instagram.

For more information about the product that the Mulvey & Banani Lighting team used to create realistic water effects inside the Niagara Takes Flight attraction, visit the X-Effects product page on the Rosco website.

Photography and Video by Alan McIntosh and Niagara Parks Commission