Central Florida has a unique homegrown holiday event that’s becoming something of a tradition. Dazzling Nights at Leu Gardens is made up of more than a dozen separate holiday-themed areas, called “worlds,” are artistically created using the medium of light and inhabited by musicians, dancers, interactive experiences – and the unexpected. The scale is massive. These unique “worlds” cover 50 acres, and they are the result of local creatives of all kinds working together.
The central “world” is called “The Snowy Revue,” and it revamps the Leu Gardens Rose Garden with musical performers in front of a 50-foot-tall snowman made of nearly 100,000 lights.
Another area is a Nordic-inspired land full of acrobatic dancers called “sliders” and surrounded by interactive 12-foot-tall mountains of light.
There’s also the Yeti Mine Adventure, a children’s inflatable obstacle course based around the event’s yeti mascot, and elsewhere, a giant 74-foot-long mural of hand placed light depicting an artistic arctic landscape.
Cole NeSmith is the founder of Creative City Project and CEO of Memoir Creative. He heads up Dazzling Nights. He has a team of forty local artists that work year-round to forge these “lightscapes” and eighty more join in for the season.
He said even he is in awe of the “worlds” Central Florida talent can bring to life. He recently gave his team a challenge they weren’t expecting when he asked them to add an interactive element to a popular yeti scavenger hunt event.
“Our team started working on this custom hardware technology that allows guests to take a ‘yeti wand’ through the event and interact with nine ‘yeti pedestals,’ and in each of the areas, it brings additional lighting to life. There's sound cues that happen. There's special effects like fog,” NeSmith said. “That required us to develop a brand new product, to develop brand new hardware, to write software, to integrate a bunch of different elements. One of our technicians literally designed a specific circuit board to make this possible. It involves woodworkers, metal workers, people who are building things out of etched acrylic, light programmers, product designers, and it really is such a cool expression of what we've been able to build here in Orlando with all of these talented people who call our community home.”
