Post by backroadjunkie on Dec 15, 2018 19:35:17 GMT
I was going to post this under polgara's Christmas Music thread, but it's not really about Christmas music, but more about a light display timed to Christmas music. So I'm making it it's own thread... 
If you've never heard about the Osborne Lights, here's the Cliff Notes version. (Or, if TL;DR, go to next post. 
)
)There's this guy named Jennings Osborne, who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. He (along with some help from his wife) has a daughter. When his kid turns 6, she asks dad if they can decorate the house for Christmas. So he puts up 1,000 lights. 7 years later, he's got over 3 million. And you know what happens next.
The neighbors get fed up and sue to shut him down, because they can't get in or out of their house when the display is on. At first they don't succeed, but the state supreme court finally kills the lights. However, this does generate some national publicity, and gets Disney's attention.
The entire display is moved to what was Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney Hollywood Studios) in Walt Disney World. It was located on Residential Street (a fake facade of a suburban residential street), part of the backlot tram tour. That part of the tram tour was removed when the Stunt Show was built (where the new Star Wars area is going to be), and was relocated to the much larger Streets of America. (Streets of America is another fake facade of a city street, but a multi-story urban city street.) All of the video below was taken on the Streets of America.
Here's a couple of pics of the lights in the daytime. Yes, they used to wire up about a block and a half of a multi-story urban street set....
They stopped the holiday show a couple years back when they started to build the Star Wars area, but I'm sure it will come back in some form or another.
All the video below has been re-rendered to full HD YouTube quality (1920x1080) even if some of it is 1080i. Sorry about that. I've uploaded all the video to YouTube, so I'm using their servers, which are a bazzilion times faster than my web server...
You can find more info and images on my webpage here. Note these HD videos aren't listed on the site yet.
I've included 3 versions of Christmas Eve - Sarajevo for comparison's sake...