The light display is a gift to the community - There is no admission charge to visit the display!
Occasionally, local non-profit organizations set up at the display for fundraisers such as hot chocolate & cookie sales, can food drives, etc. While we would love for you to support these fantastic local organizations, there is absolutely no obligation to do so.
16598 General Puller Highway, Deltaville, Virginia 23043, United States
The display runs December 2 to January 1, 5:00pm-11:00pm. We do shut down for inclement weather - Check our social media feed for closing information.
The light count changes every year - and almost always grows! 2021's display had approximately 160,000 bulbs. 2022's layout changed a bit, and has about 168,000 bulbs.
About 91% of the display are LED bulbs. About 8% are incandescent bulbs, and about 1% are RGB bulbs.
Well, kind of, but not exactly. I have a record of how many lights each element has, and what kind of light it is. It all gets added into a complex spreadsheet each year, and the power load is distributed so that we don't overload any breakers!
At peak moments of the show, the display draws approximately 170 amps of electricity. For comparison - your average house has a peak capacity of 200 amps. But there are rarely times when EVERY light is on, so it's usually under that.
We owe a huge thank you to our neighbor J&W Seafood for allowing us to annually run a couple of cords to their ice house to provide additional needed electricity.
Long story short: EVERYWHERE.
A lot comes from your standard big box stores (WalMart and Home Depot are the biggest ones, and a fair amount comes from Lowes Big Lots too.)
Much comes from specialty holiday display companies, both domestically and abroad. One major commercial vendor is based in Williamsburg, two others are in Mississippi & New York. The farthest I work with is based in Shenzhen, China.
And some things are homemade or repurposed everyday things (crab pots make up the structure of the iceberg; The gingerbread houses are repurposed Little Tykes playhouses.)
The display is controlled entirely by computer, with a piece of software called Light-O-Rama. The computer communicates with electronic controllers throughout the display, which in turn switches computerized electrical outlets on and off. Turning those switches on and off is what makes the lights "dance" to the music.
The synchronization of the lights to the music is a completely custom-programmed process. To sync lights with a new song takes approximately 4-6 hours per minute of music.
I have a small FM radio transmitter located on the display site. It has a range of several hundred feet - You can pick it up clearly from in front of both neighboring parking lots, but it gets staticy once you get beyond BB&T or the doctors office.
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