Stopping cars with channel testing

[rainyoregonchristmas]

Ok, so for my first year I put up 32 channels for Halloween and ran just a one song show for a week. No one stopped.

This week I have been putting up lights and testing individual channels manually by just plugging the lights into power cords. Just to see how things looked i plugged in two channels of my mega tree then the tree topper and it looked pretty good. THEN, I plugged in my Dripping Icicles and everything changed. Every third car started stopping. I don't know if it was that they were thinking a show was gonna begin, or if they just liked the icicles. Either way, I think things are gonna be different for Christmas.

-RainyOregonChristmas

[dgrant]

My initial tests, cars were slowing down, some stopping and still others going past and turning around to come back and park. They were hoping for more. Had to tell them first light-up is Friday at 6Pm and they and anyone are all welcome for it. The kids next door keep asking me to run the show and its really, really hard for me to say not till Friday.

[Jay Czerwinski]

I've also had a good Halloween show in our new home and people are anticipating Christmas lights. During Halloween they asked where I bought my singing faces - and now people are stopping by and asking where to get a mega tree. Ha! Not a lot of DIYers in this new neighborhood!!

And the last two to stop by while I was setting up asked about paying me to do their house. Ha! Yeah right- like I'm hoping I get just MY show set up this year...

...but it got me thinking about a potential business attempt for next year. (I can dream right?)

OK, I gotta get back to setting up.

Cheers and good luck on your display this year!!!

[Orville]

Our Halloween show went very well, then as soon as I started putting the Christmas decor up, all the kids and adults in the neighborhood started getting antsy and excited, thinking I'd have the show running before Thanksgiving night. Had to tell them the actual show will not start until 5pm Thanksgiving night, then will continue every night from 5pm to Midnight {outdoor speakers off at 10pm Sun-Thu and off at 11pm Fri & Sat}, FM transmitter only after those hours.

So once I got all the lights up and other neighbors that actually completed their Christmas display before I even started getting mine up, we're running their "static displays", so once I got all my decor up and in place, I did turn on the lights, a few animations here and there, but no music. Mostly static, but at or around 10-11pm, I'd pull out my FM/MP3 Player and run test shows to see how things were going to look and work out, neighbors out walking their dogs, or driving by at that time thought I had started running the show. LOL

Had to tell them, no, just testing, making tweaks and changes, and then rerunning to test things out, opening night is still 5pm Thanksgiving night for the display lights to be synchronized to Christmas music.

Since I sort of ran out of time to tweak everything as planned, a couple of my sequences used didn't get updated as well, older sequences from my first year and they look like crap! {to me} LOL. But the neighbors that saw the test of those thought they looked awesome. I ain't sayin' nothin'! ROFL

Edited November 21, 2012 by Orville

[jjd35]

I was setting up this last weekend and had people stopping asking questions on how it was done. One person asked me how much i had to pay for airtime to have the show on the radio. And a lot of drive by people honking and waving, this is my 3rd year with lor and this is the first time people have actually stoped and asked when it was starting and how things worked I think it might be busy lol.