The Osbourne Family's Spectacle of Dancing Lights
From Disney's Hollywood Studios Wiki
The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights on the Streets of America at Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park is a massive of millions of holiday lights perfectly synchronized to music that is featured during the holiday season.
During the event, merchandise locations are open later, and more food locations open up. Also, this is one of the few attractions that are open during Extra Magic Hours that you do not need to show a room ticket to experience.
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Before Disney History
Jennings Osborne, along with his wife Mitzi, founded a medical research facility in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1968. The business' success allowed he and his wife to eventually purchase a large estate outside of town in 1976. In 1980, after five miscarriages, the Osbornes welcomed little Breezy into the world.
In 1986, Breezy made a very simple request of her parents for Christmas ... to decorate their home in Christmas lights. Jennings gladly complied, stringing 1000 lights around their home. "Each year after that, it got bigger and bigger," Osborne would later recall. So big, in fact, that 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-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.
The lights were a wildly popular attraction, both in Arkansas and around the world, as news crews often visited to film the display.
Legal issues
The display was, however, not as popular with the Osborne's neighbors. They claimed that the display created massive traffic jams near their homes, and filed suit in 1994 to have the display turned off. Ultimately, Osborne agreed to several conditions on the display, such as a set schedule for when the lights would be turned on and hiring off-duty police officers to help the neighbors enter and exit their properties.
Much as generosity spurred the creation of the display, another act of generosity may have spelled its doom in Arkansas. After a family arrived just after the display had been turned off for the night, Jennings agreed to switch the lights on for them, in violation of the court order and netting him a $10,000 fine. The neighbors returned to court, which sided with them and ordered the display turned off permanently. Osborne appealed to both the Arkansas Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas refused to hear the case.
The Disney connection
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," formerly part of the Studio Backlot Tour. 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.
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 amongst 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 features over 40 of the icons.
In 2004, the park began construction on a new arena for Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show. 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' 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.
Disney's Hollywood Studios display
For the 2006 and all future editions, the park added over 1500 dimmer relay circuits and control switches to the display to enable the lights to switch on and off electronically, and changing the name to "The Osborne Family's Spectacle of Dancing Lights." In this variation, a musical selection is played, during which the lights "dance" to the music. After each performance, the lights remain steady for about ten minutes before "dancing" again to another selection; other holiday selections play during the intermissions. The dancing segments cycle roughly every 30-40 minutes. The "dance music" selections include:
- "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12-24)," by Trans-Siberian Orchestra
- "Jingle Bells," by Barbara Streisand
- "A Mad Russian's Christmas," by Trans-Siberian Orchestra
- "Feliz Navidad," by José Feliciano
"The Black Cat"
Amongst the holiday display, there is a "black cat" made of purple lights, that the Osborne family had on display during Halloween. When Disney received the lights, the cat was hidden amongst the other lights and has since been hidden somewhere in the display every year.
Usually the location of the cat is themed, such as "a cat on a hot tin roof" or an "alley cat."
