Month: September 2015

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9/11 Memorial

Most Americans can remember where they were on the morning of September 11, 2001 at 8:46 am and 9:03 am.  As the events of the day unfolded our family found out that a friend of my parents was the pilot of Flight 11. Suddenly the events of that day were personal and we knew that none of us who experienced the events of that would ever be the same.

Today on the 14th anniversary of 9/11 I am lucky enough to be working from home. I commute into Downtown Boston daily and whenever I see a plane take off from Logan airport and fly up over the city I find myself staring. Will it keep going and make it to its destination? is a thought that is always in my mind.

I recently was able to visit the 911 Memorial in New York. The 911 museum was not open yet and I plan to return and plan to spend time at the museum.

I had never seen NYC with the towers in the skyline. My trip to the city was in November 2001.  Visiting the site made the sheer scope of the events that day a reality.  As we made our way into the memorial and approached the waterfalls I couldn’t help but notice the silence. No one spoke. I could someone crying and realized that it was me. My dad lost a friend that day, families lost members, we as a country lost our innocence. Today 14 years later I found myself observing the moments of silence and again found tears running down my face.  We will never fully recover from that day but at least we have a serene place to visit and reflect.

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One Last Viewing of The Osbourne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights

Years ago I went to Walt Disney World with my parents for Thanksgiving and saw the Osbourne Lights for the first time. Prior to seeing them at Hollywood Studios I had never heard of them and didn’t know the story about them. Today Disney announced that this would be the last year for the display. I am lucky enough to be going to Disney in November and will get pictures and videos to share.

Here is the background on the lights from Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Osborne_Family_Spectacle_of_Dancing_Lights

History

Jennings Osborne (1943-2011[4][5][6]), along with his wife Mitzi, founded the “Arkansas Research Medical Testing Center”[7] in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1968.[8] The business’ success allowed him and his wife to eventually purchase a large estate in the middle of town in 1976. In 1980 the Osborne’s had a daughter, Allison Brianne Osborne, nicknamed Breezy.

In 1986, Breezy asked her father if they could decorate their home in lights. Osborne complied, stringing 1000 lights around their home. “Each year after that, it got bigger and bigger,” Osborne would later recall.[9] Eventually Osborne purchased the two properties adjacent to his own and expanded the display into them.

By 1993, the display had over three million lights. Some of the more prominent features included:

  • an illuminated globe, with Little Rock and Bethlehem marked, mounted in the back yard;
  • two rotating carousels of lights, placed on each end of the estate’s circular driveway;
  • a 70-foot (21 m)-tall Christmas tree of lights with 80,000 lights in three colored layers, mounted atop the home’s kitchen; and
  • a canopy of 30,000 red lights over a section of the driveway.[10]

The lights were extremely popular in both in Arkansas and around the world, as news crews often visited to film the display. Since their house was located on one of the busiest streets in Little Rock, it eventually caused severe traffic issues, and lots of complaints.

Legal issues[edit]

The display grew bigger every year, and by 1993, was lit for 35 days during the Christmas season, from sunset to about midnight every day. Six neighbors filed a lawsuit, saying traffic congestion made trips to the corner store take two hours, and they feared emergency vehicles could not get down the street. Osborne responded by adding three million more lights.[11]

The county court ordered an injunction against the display, limiting it to 15 days and directing that it be lighted only from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Osborne appealed first to the Arkansas Supreme Court and lost, then in 1994 to the United States Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas refused to halt the order. In 1995, the state Supreme Court shut the display down altogether.

However the Osborne’s continued to have a light display, but on a much smaller scale well into the 2000s. After the September 11th attacks of 2001, they erected an enormous lighted American flag with the words “God Bless America and God Bless George W. Bush” Across the top and bottom of the flag. This display remained up for several years, even as the strands of lights went out and the message was barely readable.

Display Acquired by Disney[edit]

The story of the light display’s court case brought national attention, including offers from several cities to host the display. Walt Disney World project director John Phelan contacted Osborne’s attorney about moving the display to the Orlando resort, and eventually discussed the potential move with Osborne himself.

Osborne was intrigued by the offer, but initially understood that Disney wanted to put the display on another residential street in Orlando. What Phelan actually offered was to install the display on “Residential Street,” a back-lot section at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park (then known by its original name, the Disney-MGM Studios). Being a fan of the resort himself, and realizing where the display would go, Osborne accepted Disney’s offer. In 1995, the display was set up on Residential Street as “The Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights,” becoming an immediate success.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios display[edit]

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’stheme 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 using light control boards from the company Light-O-Rama. 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 controllable LEDs (Red, Green, Blue) giving the canopy an almost video-like appearance. Now the canopy has 21,600 pixels capable of over 16 million colors.

In 2013, Siemens took over sponsorship, replacing Sylvania, the company’s former subsidiary; the brand’s owner Osram was spun off into its own company on July 5, 2013[12]

In 2014, reserved viewing of the lights was offered for the first time as part of a “Frozen Holiday Premium Package” themed around the movie Frozen.[13]

On September 11, 2015, Disney announced that the 2015 holiday season will be the final season for the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights.[2]

“Dancing Lights”[edit]

Whenever a choreographed song is played the lights “dance” to the music. After each performance, the lights remain steady for about seven minutes before “dancing” again to another selection; other holiday selections play during the intermissions, along with recorded “live” segments from a fictional radio station (with Arnie and Anne) and visits from Disney characters. The dancing segments cycle roughly every 40–60 minutes.

Current Dancing Song List[edit]