Now That’s Edutainment!

Sure, Sally Corporation is known for creating entertaining animatronic characters and immersive dark rides, but did you know Sally also promotes educational learning through engaging museum quality exhibits?  By visiting Sally’s exhibits worldwide, you can learn what qualities link human beings with the mammals of the sea, how recycling can help save the environment, how to make healthy choices that fight illness, and learn about important historical events by listening to famed statesmen, scientists, writers, and more - who look so real you’ll feel like you’ve gone back in time

Body Battles is a perfect example of the synergy between education and entertainment.  The over-the-top interactive exhibit at Nashville’s Adventure Science Center, with its dark ride-style interactive technology and animatronics is, by any measure, a hit.  The theme of the game is the battle between our bodies and the illnesses and infections that attack them.  Two groups—the pathogen team and the lymphocyte team—compete for dominance, like the good guys and the bad guys in a dark ride. A far cry from the dry, static museum exhibits of old, Body Battles was described by The Tennessean as “outrageously interactive” and was greeted with squeals of delight and screams of excitement from children (and some adults) who attended the unveiling in 2004. The black light game features laser guns, scoring consoles, cartoon-style characters and lots of bells and whistles.  “We took technologies we’ve developed for our interactive dark rides and adapted them to this museum project,” says Sally Corporation CEO John Wood.  Body Battles is a funky, colorful, barrel of fun and, yes, educational.

The Ritz Theater and LaVilla Museum in Jacksonville, Florida is also filled with edutainment.  The museum is home to a multi-media theatrical Sally production, Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, which features two very lifelike animatronic figures, James Weldon Johnson and his brother J. Rosamond Johnson.  Together they tell the story of the song Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing which was written in 1900 on the occasion of Lincoln’s birthday.  Museum visitors are entertained by a vocal performance and educated on the historical and social significance of the song.  You won’t get bored during this history lesson!

Working with Museum Services out of Gainesville, Florida Sally created the “junkyard dog.”   Made from all recyclable material, he serves as a narrator to this huge traveling exhibit that promotes the act of recycling.  The exhibit consists of an interactive game where you identify recyclable materials from a large junk pile. The junkyard dog engages visitors and makes learning fun!

Sometimes the greatest learning comes from being submerged in an educational environment.  That is exactly what guests experience when they enter the Atlantic Tails exhibit in downtown Jacksonville’s Museum of Science and History.  The guest’s experience is all encompassing.  At the entrance guests encounter a huge wall mural featuring the local marine mammals and see the actual skull and skeletal components of a humpback whale!  Within the walls are backlit bubble curtains to enhance the feeling of entering another world.  Once inside, visitors come face to face with a life-size bas relief sculpture of a 50-foot right whale, a fiberoptic map that teaches mammal migration patterns, and the “echolocator” that brings to life the sounds and senses of marine mammals.  This interactive undersea playground has been educating visitors for over a decade.   Sally Corporation is extremely proud to have been a part of these engaging exhibits. Informing museum visitors in an involving and exciting way is, in our opinion, the most FUN way to learn!