One glance inside the old Aloha Showroom in the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center and you know something is changing but there's nothing there yet to give away the grandeur of what will fill that space by fall of next year.

"It's gonna be like nothing you've ever seen in Hawaii," said Local entertainment leader Roy Tokujo.

Drawing on all the excitement of the biggest shows in Las Vegas, the men who worked together to create Cirque Du Soleil shows like "O" and "Ka" are creating an incredible production to tell the history of Waikiki.

KGMB9 brings you your first peak at what will become "Waikiki Nei" a $22-million visual extravaganza, complete with seating for 750 people, 135-foot wide cinema screens and high wire trapezes.

Roger Parent masterminded many of the high tech effects.

"We can fly people back from the back row up until the front of the stage area at ten feet per second which is pretty fast," said Parent.

They've already been working hard in Montreal to invent and develop new technology for the show, including this huge rotating donut to create ocean motion.

"We'll have a 26,000 lumin video projector shooting waves here," Parent said, "surf boards planted in it and we'll be surfing. It can also rotate over the audience and we can have a canoe sticking out. Like they do when they hit the big waves."

The entire thrilling trip thru time in Waikiki has been written with careful attention to accuracy.

A crew from Kamehameha Schools has been overseeing the story's authenticity and dozens of local actors and dancers are already being trained for their roles.

Bringing a show of this size to Waikiki is no easy feat. The building itself is undergoing a major transformation. The current ceilings for example are already 28 feet.

But up above, steel beams are being added to raise that ceiling to a new height of 50 feet.

Two of the most powerful entertainment leaders in the country are working on this, including Todd Dougall, a former V.P. of entertainment for the MGM Grand.

"This project is as big as any that I've ever done and I've had the opportunity to do the biggest," said Dougall.

Dougall is working with Roger Parent who has already produced 7 Cirque Du Soleil shows. But the start of this dream came from local entertainment leader Roy Tokujo.

Tokujo first fell in love with Waikiki decades ago, when it was a smaller, sleepier town. He was a college boy from Waipahu who went off to Michigan State.

"But there I was so homesick about hawaii when I went to Michigan state," said Tokujo, "that I threw one of the largest luaus in Michigan State history."

A massive gathering of 10,000 people, complete with muu-muu's, lei and fire dancers.

Tokujo has always looked for ways to share the beauty of Hawaii with the world and Waikiki Nei has been a decade in the making for him.

"Not only are you going to identify with it -- but I think you're gonna be wowed by it," Tokujo said. "It's going to take you to another level."

And when the show ends, something will happen there that's never been done before. The seating collapses to transform the showroom into a huge Ultralounge.

"This enables to clear the floor," Parent explains, "after the show the place turns into a club with a huge dance area and a moveable DJ box."

The Waikiki Nei show and Ultralounge should be rocking by late summer of next year. And, the man who was probably the first to bring grass huts to a Michigan State auditorium is about raise the roof on the entertainment industry in Waikiki.

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