Dino-Might: The Magic Wheelchair Reveal

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How do you give a kid like Adrian Diaz the best day ever? Easy. Put him on stage in front of cameras, give him his dream costume, let him dominate at arcade games, and then bestow the honor of leading the famous Haunted Happenings Grand Parade in Salem, Massachusetts.

Adrian is a star in the making. He wanted everyone and anyone to see his Halloween costume, provided by the SOLIDWORKS Magic Wheelchair build team. So, at 11 AM on a beautiful October day, his loved ones, the build team, a film crew from NBC Boston, and people strolling the park gathered in the Salem Common to see the big costume reveal.

The Wandering Stage Company assembled a stage next to the famous bandstand in the Salem Common, and the SOLIDWORKS build team set up Adrian’s costume. Halloween music played while Adrian zipped around the park, telling everyone about his costume reveal.

Once he’d gathered a crowd, Adrian took the stage. His costume was covered in a Magic Wheelchair drop sheet, shielding it from view. Confidently grabbing hold of the microphone, Adrian led the crowd in a countdown. As the build team unveiled the costume, and the crowd roared. Adrian gaped.

Adrian tasked the build team with a truly unique costume; he wanted a transforming robot that could actually transform. Many Halloween costumes, even elaborate Magic Wheelchair costumes, offer the illusion of movement: a stationary character posed mid-action or lights that make costume parts seem like they are moving. Adrian’s request was special: something that could actually move and transform. It’s a mechanical engineer’s greatest dream and worst nightmare all rolled into one, but the SOLIDWORKS build team delivered.

Adrian had asked for a robot that turned into a pterodactyl. To do this, the team made a costume that would fully encase Adrian, turning him into the robot. He wanted lights, wings that flapped, and a robot head that transformed into a pterodactyl head. The team heard his ideas and spent five months designing, engineering, and fabricating the most complex costume they’d ever created.

On stage, team leader Sal Lama explained the costume to Adrian and the excited crowd. The green, gold, and chrome costume had a beak that Adrian could manually raise up and down to turn himself into a dinosaur. Colorful lights were incorporated into the eyes in the beak and front of the costume. Adrian’s costume also had a soundboard and a built-in microphone, so when he talked, he sounded like a robot.

The parts of the costume that made his eyes pop out, however, were the wings and arms. By simply turning a dial on a dashboard, Adrian could make his costume go into dinosaur mode. A motor made the arms telescope in and out and flapped his robot wings.

“Did we do okay?” asked Sal.

The microphone squeaked as Adrian yelled, “This is awesome! I was like, where’s the transforming? A transformer needs to transform!”

“Did we do it?” I asked.

“Yes, we did! I love it!” cried Adrian. Everyone loved it.

The build team helped Adrian into the costume, where he proceeded to drive all over the Salem Common, to the delight of passersbys. NBC Boston interviewed him in his costume and Adrian loved the attention.

There was still more to come. That evening, Adrian would be the Honorary Grand Marshal of the Salem Haunted Happenings Grand Parade, which officially opened the city’s Halloween season. To keep the day’s energy going (and also keep the costume safe until the parade), Adrian took off the costume while everyone went to BitBar, a local restaurant chock-full of arcade games. Adrian had a blast playing with his extended family, his parents, and his little brother Mateo.

While Adrian played games and toured Salem with his family, the build team got to work setting up for the parade. SOLIDWORKS Senior Director of Product Development John Sweeney drove to Salem in his electric truck to pull the parade float. The parade theme was “Our Time on Earth,” which promoted environmentalism and lowering individual and collective carbon footprints. The build team asked John if he would drive with his electric pickup truck to support this theme, and also so Adrian and his guests wouldn’t have to breathe in gas fumes along the parade route.

The parade float was a flatbed trailer that John pulled to the parade staging ground. The trailer, generously lent to the team by Jason Pohl, was decorated with metallic green fringe, twinkling lights, and fake leaves to match the costume’s dinosaur look. The build team also packed over 60 pounds of candy to hand out during the parade, along with stickers and leaflets about Magic Wheelchair.

While waiting for the parade to start, Adrian, Mateo, and Adrian’s best friend Pete played around with lightsabers and gaped at the other floats and costumes in the parade staging ground. “This is so cool!” Adrian kept saying.

Finally, it was parade time. Adrian got into his costume on the float and Mateo (dressed as a police officer, like his dad) and Pete (dressed as the Mandalorian) joined him. As Honorary Grand Marshal, Adrian was fourth in line for the parade, following the mayor of Salem. His transforming pterodactyl would be one of the first costumes parade goers saw.

It was one heck of a parade opener. All throughout the route people gasped, yelled, and clapped for Adrian. Many people in the crowd gaped at John Sweeney’s truck and called out Pete for his Mandalorian costume, but when Adrian hit the switch to transform his costume, all eyes were on him. He was a hit.

Following the parade float, the build team and Adrian’s extended family handed out candy. It turns out 60 pounds of candy is not enough for the Salem Haunted Happenings Grand Parade, as before the first half of the route was done, the candy bags were empty. But even though the team was out of candy, seeing Adrian was more than enough for the crowd. Everywhere he went people applauded and cheered for him.

The best part for Adrian came at the end of the parade. Two people were waiting for him as the float reached the Salem Common, where all the reveal excitement happened at the beginning of the day and where the parade route ended. Adrian’s physical and occupational therapists, whom he works with weekly, had come up from Waltham to see him. It was a true surprise, one he hadn’t been expecting, and when he got out of his costume at the end of the route he was beaming. Seeing his two therapists outside of the NAPA Center was the best part of an already amazing day.

“This was the best day of my life!” Adrian exclaimed. While the build team helped Adrian’s father load the costume into his pickup truck, Adrian rode around in excitement and could not stop smiling. He chattered about how great the day was, how happy he was to see his therapists, how much fun he had playing video games, and how incredible the costume was. Everyone on the build team felt proud for making a costume and experience that matched Adrian’s wild imagination, showcased his sparkling personality, and made him and his loved ones so happy.

When I asked him what it was like in the parade, Adrian told a story. He said he saw a boy with a sign that read, “Today is my birthday” so he made sure to shout “Happy Birthday, Happy Halloween!” into the crowd.

“Because,” he explained, “if they have a birthday, I want to make the birthday good.” And because Adrian is who he is, it’s safe to say he definitely succeeded.

Adrian’s costume and reveal would not have been possible without the hard work of dozens of people. The SOLIDWORKS build team were given an incredible challenge this year and they hit it out of the (Jurassic) park. Here are all the build team members, along with their favorite dinosaur: Dan Deoreo (design and fabrication of arm mechanism, Velociraptor), Gabe Enright (voice and sound effects, Hadrosaur), Hannah Gilmore (logistics support, painter, Styracosaurus), Albert Hernandez (costume designer, Albertosaurus), Chinloo Lama (colors, foam work, wings, Triceratops), Max Lama (3D print slicer, assembler, modeler, Ankylosaurus), Sal Lama (team leader, frame maker, gear train expert, Stegosaurus), David Law (painter, foam builder, gluer, Ankylosaurus), Yun Li (electronics for motor control, Dracorex),  Rachael Naoum (cyber clothier, Hettangian haberdasher, Ichthyosaurus) Jason Pohl (trailer lender, all-around good guy, Ankylosaurus), John Sweeney (dinosaur chauffer, another all-around good guy, Velociraptor), and Sara Zuckerman (logistics, documentarian, Dilophosaurus).

A special thanks and shout out to the people behind the scenes who support the SOLIDWORKS Magic Wheelchair team: Suchit Jain (SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE Works Vice President of Strategy and Business Development), Manish Kumar (SOLIDWORKS CEO), Mary Brackett (SOLIDWORKS Executive Assistant), Abhishek Bali (3DEXPERIENCEWorks Startup Ecosystem Director), and Sean Farrell (3DEXPERIENCE Lab Manager).

We always give a massive thank you to the crew at Magic Wheelchair and their incredible leader, Christine Getman, for their friendship, guidance, and support. Thank you to the team at The Wandering Stage Company for the stage and music in the Salem Common. A huge thank you to Ryan Reed and the team at Rewatchable for documenting the reveal. We would also like to thank Jeremy Fiske from the Salem Mayor’s Office, and Jeff Schwartz and the Salem Chamber of Commerce for their help and guidance during the reveal on the Common, and for giving Adrian such a grand honor.

Finally, this entire project would not have been possible without Adrian, Mateo, Cassie, Jose, and their incredible family and friends. Adrian has natural charisma and energy that pulls people into his orbit, and his positivity and imagination are wonderful to be around. He’s a great older brother to Mateo and a wonderful son to Cassie and Jose. It was an honor and pleasure to help create this experience for the Diaz’s and to help spread Adrian’s message to the world.

The Magic Wheelchair project is proudly accelerated by 3DEXPERIENCE Lab and supported by Dassault Systèmes US Foundation. The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is the global startup accelerator and open innovation program of Dassault Systemes and is committed to empowering startups and makers with ideas that can potentially shift scales of innovation in their particular domain. In the case of Magic Wheelchair, the project scored super high on its ability to leverage collective intelligence and 3DEXPERIENCE platform solutions to create huge impact on society.

The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is made of up passionate makers, and any team of volunteers who want to work on building an epic Magic Wheelchair costume will be provided with free access to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The platform has a full range of 3D modeling, collaborative, information intelligence and simulation apps, including industry leaders CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, SIMULIA, and 3DSWYM. We invite anyone interested to join our community.

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Does Magic Wheelchair sound like the kind of project you and your community would like to participate in? Get involved with Magic Wheelchair by starting your own team!

Now that the costume is revealed and the parade is over, keep an eye on the SOLIDWORKS blog for more about how we designed, engineered, and fabricated everything that went into Adrian’s costume. There’s more explosive dino-might in the future—stay tuned!

Sara Zuckerman

Sara Zuckerman

Sara Zuckerman is a Content Marketing Specialist in Brand Offer Marketing for SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE WORKS.
Sara Zuckerman

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