So how was your Christmas Eve Trafffic?

[bhays]

Here's a video from our house tonight..

[rwertz]

I counted six serious viewers after we got home at 8PM. That truly could be an all time high here.

[toddmoon]

For a small town where I live of 3500 I had a steady stream of vehicles clear past 11 PM. I was amazed at the traffic for Christmas Eve. It is 6 degrees outside right now where I live and being Christmas Eve I thought there would be little or no traffic. Boy was I wrong. I wound up extending my display time so people could keep on watching.

[shfr26]

I had the most traffic on the eve than I did any other night so far. Handy out candy canes and trying to put together a trampoline in the dark, Great night!! I also had my show run an extra hour.

[George Simmons]

Well, you know the old saying: Light it and they will come...

We had an unbelievable amount of traffic... and we're a town of only 1500! Every time we looked out the window expecting to see the street empty it seemed there was more and more people. Our third best night for food shelf collections for the entire season - even despite the snowstorm. We, too, extended the show until after 11. Amazing...

[Ed Slonka Jr]

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

We had a nice flow here too. I read on another post where someone hands out candy canes so I did last night.

I ended up giving them to about 14 or 15 cars and missed quite a few that would just slow down long enough to take a look and then move on.

That was a great experience. Seeing all the smiles and the wonderful comments by all.

Will do it again tonight if I have no company.

[JeffF]

We had some serious family issues to deal with before even thinking about the lights last night but since everything seemed to be working out extremely well(THANKS AGAIN FOR THE PRAYERS!!!), I started the show about 6:30pm from my mother's driveway. Then I tried getting the security cameras to come up to see if there was anybody even there but the notebook was acting up so it needed a reboot.

Once it rebooted and the video feed started to show it was apparent what type of night it was going to be... BUSY!!!

It took me 15 minutes to get into my own driveway. There were cars lining the street, 4 cars in the driveway(which we recommend since our road isn't really display friendly), and everybody was out of their cars in our driveway dancing and being very social.

When I finally got in the driveway and parked they clapped... talk about embarrassing. :shock: I'm one who likes to watch from the sidelines and just see how happy people get with the lights.

There was a group of ladies I got talking to and they really wanted to see Amazing Grace... after a few songs I told them I'd just stop the actual show and play it for them. A couple other people seemed shocked when I got on the notebook and did just that. (it was pretty cool controlling the show from the middle of the crowd tbh) One woman had an issue getting in her vehicle and missed half the song so I played it again for her. Seemed to make them happy even with the issue. (the issue involved stepping on top of a snow covered ditch... and the snow wasn't solid!!! :{)

Traffic stayed pretty darn busy the whole night with only 2 or 3 slow spells(slow as in 2 or 3 cars in the driveway which on a normal night is a good clip).

I have to thank Tim Fischer for his strategy of repeating the same song every 3 or 4 songs. We played Frosty every 4th song and it seemed to keep the traffic moving right along. It was really noticeable how it worked because you'd get people moving in the middle to end of the the song.

The show was supposed to end at 10:00pm but I continued it manually after that until about 10:45pm. *THAT* was very cool. I sat in the basement manually playing songs without any advertisements because it seemed like people knew the routine. Traffic seemed to be on the road mostly for the show... almost everyone driving by stopped to watch for at least one song... it was cool.

After stopping the show I had to collect the donations and there were people still pulling up to watch the lights. I felt bad but the kiddos were getting worried about staying up so late because they didn't want Santa to pass by. I can completely understand because I didn't want that either... it'd stink waiting a whole year and then your Father does something stupid to ruin everything.

People were still stopping in front of the house until 11:30pm. I knew that because I was putting together a little Christmas night display sequence down in the basement and every once in a while I'd glance at the security cameras and see them.

Sorry for the long winded response but with all that has been going on here lately, it was nice having a great Christmas Eve.

Thanks again for the Prayers everyone... God Bless and...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
The Folejewski Family

[Don]

Most weekends it's been 3-4 cars steady throughout the night.

Christmas even should have been 7+ cars steady all night.

Instead the total was 12. Not at a time, just 12. 3" of snow fell in the Dallas area yesterday, more to the north where I am. Course, it rained first, and the roads froze over. Had a hard enough time walking down the driveway, (and across the street) so I could get some pictures. Ended up shutting down about 8:45.

Roads should clear today. Should be an interesting night.

[Dad02]

After the newspaper ran a photo and caption in yesterday's paper we had cars stopped all the way to next block. Twenty degrees out and kids were watching with their windows open.

[shfr26]

Jeff Millard wrote:

shfr26 wrote:

...and trying to put together a trampoline in the dark...

WOW! Yer display has a trampoline?!? Man I wish I lived in Florida!

Jeff

Well Jeff, where else can I "bounce" my ideas around????????

[jfelix]

We were not as busy Christams Eve as we were the prior 4 nights. Cars were steady all night long till around 11. But after 4 days of directing trafic out front for 2.5 hours solid I expected it to be the same. I think the rain may have slowed it down, which was fine. Got to spend time withour family and friends rather that direct traffic.




My wife posted some picson ger facebook page from Tuesday and Wed. night. We had 12-13 cars in the cul de sac with a line all the up the road all night. It was a lot of fun.

[Robin]

I gave out about 1000 candy canes in two hours on Christmas Eve then ran out of them.

Christmas Eve we make our street going in one way. We have several parking areas where we can handle about 100 cars or so. We usually have one or two people in those areas to make sure people exit in one direction. We stop and give instructions to each car as where to park and how to exit and then give them the candy canes.

Of course we have real heavy traffic on Santa nights so we have it pretty well down now on what to do and how to do it.

It should drop off starting Sunday night so maybe I can get some video of a couple of new things I created this year. If not no big deal. We do have one video who is getting a lot of views this year for some reason. White Christmas by the Drifters with Clyde McPhatter has over 73,000 views. Our it's called Christmas that we did two years ago seemed to take off this year as well.

[toddmoon]

Well tonight the traffic at my place tanked to 1 for the whole night. It probably does not help that our night time temp is 6 degrees.

So how about it. When is everyone shutting down their shows? Are you going until New Years or is this weekend the end for your display?

[George Simmons]

Mine will go until New Year's Eve. I've stripped out all the Christmas-specific music and will go this week with all my "other" stuff. We still had an average of half a dozen cars outside all night yesterday until almost 10 PM, although most of those are repeat, re-repeat and re-re-repeat types of visitors. I'm hoping to scrounge another 80 bucks in donations this week to make it an even 2 grand for this year.

[LENNY RUEL]

Actually traffic from Christmas Eve on has been a disappointment.
I had been averaging over $100 a day in the donation box for the week to that point and the traffic reflected it. Then we had the big weather system move in and rather than get snow we got the rain side of it. The traffic we did have I don't think many got out of their cars to donate. It was the same for Christmas night as well as Sat and Sunday. With how we where doing early in the week and being on the news again Tuesday Morning and knowing we had a feature coming up Sunday on another local channel we expected to have a huge 4 days. We ended up averaging about $20 a night. Saturday we went to see some of the other displays in the area and the big one, which is a couple miles from me still had a 15 minute wait to get close. Very disheartening.
This, coupled with a comment I heard last week between a couple cars when I was out salting has me seriously considering not continuing doing this kind of show.
There were a couple cars apparently who knew each other. One was surprised to see the other at least and said "hey this is something, we really like this." Then the second car commented "actually this is pretty lame, you should see the one in Darboy. If you think this is nice, that one is going to blow your socks off!" My wife asked if I was sure the word was lame. I told her they were not 20' from me and it was clear as a bell. I guess that explains his steady stream of traffic yet and my 0-2 cars.
Now on top of it with all the rain and it getting cold I have strings going out. Water gets in the light sockets and freezes and it's like twist shorting out the bulbs. You pull the entire light out and the socket is coated with ice. Pull the bulb out of its housing and the bulb is coated where it fits in its housing. Spent three hours yesterday re-wrapping where I could not get strings to come back up only to end up with a couple more going off last night. On an arch it's like having Jessica Simpson walk up to you and giving you a big smile and having a front tooth missing. Even tried to take a blow dryer out to thaw them and dry them and it didn't work. GRRRRRR!!

Lenny

[radioguy1007]

Lenny:

I can definitely side with you on the weather in Wisconsin being a few miles south of you. Christmas eve was horrid - the heavy snow followed by the heavy rains. Last year it was much better. I also was out fixing my arches yesterday where the water got into the sockets and pushed out the bulbs - breaking the wire leads coming out of the glass. The last two years I was digging out my display from the snow.

Don't give it up. Just because a couple people make a negative comment about what they see should not affect you. You can't please everybody. Let them try doing what we do and see how much effort it takes.

I've had at least one memorable event that makes me continue to do it again every year. Just look at a smile on a child's face - I think if you made one child happy, then it's all worth it.

Oh - and what works with fixing the arches? I learned a small amount of hot water dumped on a problem area works wonders - with a light keeper pro to identify the bad spot.

Mike

[JeffF]

radioguy1007 wrote:

Don't give it up. Just because a couple people make a negative comment about what they see should not affect you. You can't please everybody. Let them try doing what we do and see how much effort it takes.

I'll second this. I had 4 or 5 people pull off the road right into the ditch last year and I either pulled out or at least offered to pull out every one of them. (the ditches get covered over flat with snow so even though I put cones out... people managed to get between the cones into the ditches)

One guy in particular really offended me. He was someone who found the ditch and after about 5 minutes I had him out. He didn't say thank you or anything he only said "And man... we came all this way for *THAT*? There's not that many lights there at all..."

I just got done putting the chain back in my truck... whipped the dirt and salt from my overalls... and said "There are 42,580 lights... next time try keeping it on the road and maybe you'll enjoy the show..."

When I got back into the house I thought to myself that that was his honest opinion because he had no clue I was the guy behind the show. It bummed me out for a bit hearing that kind of feedback. BUT, I got over it and it honestly made me try to get more lights visible from different viewing angles on our show. That's one reason we lit up our fence and moved our mini-mega tree into the main yard this year.

Don't let it beat you down, just come back swinging... And remember the famous quote...
George Simmons wrote:

So step up to the plate, scratch yer balls, hack out a loogie and give it your best shot. As long as you don't suck too bad, people are gonna love what you do.

Just change the last part to "99.9% of people are gonna love what you do."

-Jeff

[LENNY RUEL]

Thanks for the kick in the rear guys. As much as I decorated before going the animated route and actually thinking about it, it would be tough to stop.
Mike, I get the smile from my little 17 month old daughter when my wife brings her home from daycare every night. She lights up and says LIGHTS !!, OOOOHHH.
How does LIGHTKEEPER PRO work in this case? I know in plugging the string in to it nothing happens because I tried it. One of the strings yesterday you could actually put an ear to it and hear a zzzzzzzzzzz. I found the bulb as when I took it out and knocked off the ice and reinstalled it the sound was gone but the string was still dead, or half string. But after that I figured a blow dryer would melt the ice and dry the sockets out. Apparently not well enough. I have another half string out on an arch to check when I get home. My 7' tripod trees I just rewrapped with another string.

Lenny

[radioguy1007]

Lenny:

Light Keeper Pro senses the electrical field around a hot wire. Normally the "zapper" fixes open shunts, but when one of the little wires breaks off the base of the glass bulb you are screwed. That happened to 3 of mine yesterday. The water got into the lamp base then froze, pushing the bulb outward and something had to give. The LKP senses the live side of the power (start from one end or another of the wrap), when the beeping stops you are close to the problem - usually the bulbe before the beeper stops. Thaw those bulbs in that area (like I said I like hot water - it works fast) and remove each and check again with the LKP.

The buzzing is minor arching in the socket that has a broken lead. If you can identify the one, you've got that one solved.

One more thing, I moved this year to a new home and kept in touch with some of the old neighbors. I never though my old home display was well attended. Well, I ended up putting a flyer box by the old location to direct the people to the new home that came back and were asking my old neighbors "what happened to the lights?"!

And you have one very important viewer that apparently approves of your lights. That should be all that matters.

Mike

[LENNY RUEL]

Mike: Thanks for the heads up on what is going on as it confirms my thinking. Also on the LKP use for this. Wasn't sure it would work with the wraps but after your notes it makes sense. Don't know why I had the brain fart on that one.
Yep, my little girl depending on what is playing when she gets home will also say DANCE and want to be put down. Since most of my stuff is upbeat she likes to wiggle her butt and wave her arms around. Its a hoot!!

Thanks for the tip again.

Lenny