Standing in the Amazon Music Lounge at the Climate Pledge Arena on Tuesday, tour guide Joe Vella asked Alexa to play some appropriate musicals for visitors. Amazon’s voice assistant powers Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
As the decades-old rock anthem played in the musician’s haunts, Vera slapped his long hair along with the song. He told Alexa she was doing fine.
“Thanks. Seattle rocks,” the AI replied.
The interaction should serve visitors well as the arena begins new guided tours to showcase a $1.15 billion reimagining of the old KeyArena.
Fans who have attended a Seattle Kraken or Storm game, concert or other event at Climate Pledge Arena may have been eager to learn more about the venue’s history, reconstruction and capabilities before leaving.
The new tour is designed to convey that message using a variety of video and audio enhancements, supported by special technology interfaces and behind-the-scenes visits. GeekWire got a preview Tuesday morning.
“The tour is a way for people to learn at a high level all the different parts that make the Climate Pledge Arena unique,” said Dave Curry, Arena’s vice president of technology. “A lot of it is driven by our peers and other interested parties — sponsors, other teams, other venues — who are evaluating similar technologies or solutions.”
The roughly 75-minute hike covers a distance of about a mile and spans multiple levels of the arena—from 80 feet below the ground, where the ice sits, to the height of the rafters, where the News Bridge sits. There are approximately 19 stops along the way, including Kraken and Storm locker rooms, visiting performer’s lounge, Amazon Music Lounge, Amazon Living Wall, Kraken Master Suite, Pitchbook Winformation Wall, and more.
GeekWire’s tour is led by Vella, one of a dozen tour guides hired so far to educate fans on what makes the climate pledge special. With a background in theater and improv and a devoted following on Twitch, Vella follows a script from memory while relying on his own sports and music fans to spice things up.
Guides use iPhones strapped to their wrists so they know which stop to visit next, and start and end audio and visual cues in the arena each time they enter and exit a particular stop. Music and lighting are custom for each stop and become more dramatic depending on the location.
For example, from the Kraken locker room to the skating rink, those on the tour can walk through the same tunnels that NHL teams use at games. The music was loud at this point, accentuated by the cheers of 17,000 fans. The making of the ice and how and where it is stored among other events is a big curiosity for visitors, and when GeekWire visited, it was under the Seattle University basketball court.
Burbank, California-based BRC Imagination Arts worked with Climate Pledge’s technology team to integrate its custom demo with the AV system that typically delivers a variety of media to fans at games or concerts. The company previously designed tours for Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, home of the Raiders.
Tours can run concurrently, staggered every 20 minutes, without bumping into each other. Operators using a simple iPad interface can track each guide’s location at stops along the route. The tech talks to every light, LED wall, speaker, and secure area, and the operator can shut down the entire system just in time for the arena’s normal tech team to take over for game night.
“We basically built a backbone of code that could translate and talk to every system in the building,” said Edward Hodge, BRC vice president and creative director, who spent about eight or nine months developing Tour of the Arena.
The order of tours can be rearranged in the system if desired, like songs in a playlist, which is fitting since sound plays a key role. There are 100 audio zones along the way.
“We visited every stop on the tour, and we treated them as cinema spaces, where we tuned every single speaker,” Hodge said. “We’re treating it like a big attraction. I always say it’s like Pirates of the Caribbean without the boat. Everything else is very similar in terms of technology and all the show control systems.”
The tour focuses on promoting a major focus of the climate commitment arena – sustainability. Amazon named the location after buying the rights in 2020 and trying to draw more attention to its environmental initiatives. The multi-stop discussion was about the environmental measures taken by the arena. Even the tickets attached to the guest lanyards are made from plantable seed paper.
In addition to the plant-based living wall and music lounge, Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” cashierless retail technology is being used at various franchise locations in the arena.
Curry, the arena’s technical chief, was a longtime IT executive for the Seattle Mariners. An arena that hosts sporting events, concerts and other events around the clock is very different from a traditional baseball stadium, and visitors will be interested in learning how to make it all work, he said.
“The Space Needle and Seattle Center are huge draws for people who are here on vacation and want to see the main attractions in Seattle,” Curry said. “And we are among them.”
Tickets for Climate Pledge Arena tours start at $49, with discounts for Kraken and Storm season ticket holders and others. A “drink and watch” add-on at the Space Needle Lounge costs $60.
Keep scrolling to see more GeekWire images:
