Disney's Hollywood Studios Display
Residential Street was visited using the backlot tour's tram vehicles. When the light display was in place, however, the tram tours would stop before sunset, allowing guests to walk among the displays. Initially the display was purely the original lights from the Osborne estate, but in subsequent years the display was augmented to its current size of over five million lights. The display's Disney caretakers have also added a number of hidden Mickeys into the lights. The 2007 edition of the display featured over 40 of the icons.
The display is made up of over 10 miles (16 kilometers) of rope lighting connected by another 30 miles (48 kilometers) of extension cords. The extension cords and lights are held together using two million ties. It takes 20,000 man-hours to install the display each holiday season, starting in September. The lights are turned on at dusk each night, starting in mid-November and running into the first week of January, and require 800,000 watts of electricity.
In 2004, the park began construction on a new arena for its upcoming Lights! Motors! Action! Extreme Stunt Show, set to open in 2005. Part of the construction included the demolition of Residential Street, thus necessitating another move of the display. The solution was to move it to another part of the park, the New York Street set (now known as the Streets of America). As part of the move, the Studios added an artificial snow effect to the display, made up of 33 snow machines that use 100 gallons of fluid per evening.
In 2005, Sylvania became the presenting sponsor of the lights, as part of parent company Siemens's long-term sponsorship deal with the Walt Disney Company's theme parks, which also included the Spaceship Earth and IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth attractions at Epcot.
For the 2006 edition, the park added over 1500 dimmer relay circuits and control switches to the display to enable the lights to dim on and off electronically. The relays were choreographed to a musical score, and the display was given its current name.
In 2011 the display had a major overhaul... all the lights were swapped out for LED lights including all the ropelight. During this overhaul the lighting control was updated to a "state of the art" entertainment lighting system. This means all the previously choreographed dancing sequences had to be redone. While all these updates the production team wanted to change one more major element to the display, the canopy. The canopy in previous years was all red and separated in only 8 circuits, 4 on each side; now each light has 3 completely controlable LEDs (Red, Green, Blue) giving the canopy an almost video like apparance. Now the canopy has 21,600 pixels capable of over 16 billion colors.
Read more about this topic: The Osborne Family Spectacle Of Dancing Lights
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