Samantha Leese pays a visit to the site of Cotai’s newest attraction

Despite experiencing a recent downturn, over the past few years Macau has earned the title of Asia’s Las Vegas, repeatedly surpassing its American rival in terms of gaming revenue (according to the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau of Macau, 2008 saw figures for Macau exceed US$13 billion, while Vegas only took in $6.12 billion), with over thirty casinos crammed into the tiny enclave. At the heart of all this gambling action lies the emerging Cotai Strip.

Given Cotai’s breakneck development (it’s worth remembering that as recently as 2000 the area was nothing more than murky water), any new venture will require both extraordinary imagination and wealth to compete with the established likes of The Venetian. It seems the titanic new City of Dreams project is more than up for the fight.

This four-hotel, 2,200-room “integrative entertainment resort” due to open this summer, is the ambitious brainchild of Lawrence Ho (son of Stanley) and James Packer (heir to the publishing, media and gaming empire of late Aussie mogul Kerry). With more money being poured into the hotel-casino-mall complex than can be safely released to the press, the resort will house a 420,000 sq ft casino, and is the only development of its kind that will come online in 2009. To make the biggest impact possible upon its opening, the folks behind City of Dreams have come up with Dragon’s Treasure, a multimedia monster fest that looks set to usurp Cirque du Soleil’s Zaia as king of the Cotai entertainment scene.

To pull off this visionary coup, Ho employed JuliAnn Blam and Cecil Magpuri of Falcon’s Treehouse, an acclaimed US creative services firm that has previously worked with such entertainment juggernauts as Disney, Universal and Hard Rock. The pair, who among other things masterminded the 2000 renovation of Spaceship Earth at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, has spent two years developing the ideas and logistics behind this extravagant fantasy show.

“We’re creating a Bubble Theatre, one of the largest, if not the largest, dome theatres in the world. It’s going to be a vehicle that transports you into the world of the dragons,” says Magpuri dramatically, flipping on a TV screen to illustrate what he’s talking about.

As the video plays, Blam (who worked for more than ten years as a Disney Imagineer) explains that visitors will enter the 20 by 36 metre theatre, and step into what appears to be a bubble. After a pre-show briefing, the bubble will seem to descend into an underwater realm beneath the City of Dreams, namely, the domain of the Jade Emperor Dragon.

Up to 500 spectators will then gasp their way through a ten minute immersive production that involves 29,000 theatrical LED lights. They’ll be surrounded by high-definition videos of hyper ‘realistic’ dragons 300 feet long, which will be supported throughout by spectacular physical special effects (yet to be revealed at time of press). The animation is set to a musical score composed by Academy Award winner Klaus Badelt, and recorded in part with the London Symphony Orchestra. A modest affair, then.

“This is the first time ever that a projection design of this nature has been executed, where the content is literally all around you, wherever you look and turn. It’s like a real world,” gushes Magpuri, “We’ve done so much to try and give you the sensation that this is really happening to you. We’ve even provided handrails for guests to hold on to, because you’ll believe you’re moving.”

It’s hard not to be impressed, particularly when Blam explains that an “intimate team” of one hundred creative minds from across the world (not to mention the thousands of construction workers who are frantically building the place) is working round the clock to realise Lawrence Ho’s mandate to provide “something that cannot be seen any place else.”

Macau certainly has no dearth of attractions, from the musical fountain at Wynn to the Grand Lisboa’s raunchy Crazy Paris cabaret, but it’s Cirque du Soleil’s popular Zaia playing just across the road that will no doubt remain Dragon’s Treasure’s greatest rival. So how will Magpuri and Blam’s visual orgy compare to the internationally renowned human circus?

“It’s different; it’s not a human spectacle like Cirque du Soleil. It’s a media experience that takes you on a journey through magical worlds that no one has even imagined before,” says Magpuri, “It’s setting a new bar in the casino market. To have a shift like this, a new way of telling a story, it’s almost a preshow for what the casino is going to be.”