Some General Info About Our Display:
This display is a residential (not commercial) computer controlled animated light show. Most of the components of the display have been built from scratch, and the construction of the entire project is done by ourselves with the help of some hard working good friends such as Dennis from the Auburn Sign Store and Flag Center who graciously provided the bucket truck to help do some of the high work and Ron from the New England School of Metalworks for his help in crafting the top of our mega-tree which allowed us to "grow" the tree to its full capacity. Also special thanks to Mike who worked tirelessly with me getting this year's display up and Eric for helping us run thousands of feet of power lines and plugging things in allowing the lights to come to life. Many others have contributed time testing lights, setting elements up and helping create new items without whose help none of this would be possible. This year there are ROUGHLY 180,000 individual lights making up this display. There are ~30,000 lights in the giant christmas tree alone. While certainly this IS a lot of lights, the thing that surprises visitors most is how much less the electricity cost is compared to what you might think. This is for several reasons, all made possible by the computerized animation. For one, MOST of the lights are NOT on at most times, making it consume much less power than a similarly sized, or even much smaller, static display. The other thing our system gives us control over is the intensity of the individual lights. We run this at about 70% of what you would normally see if you just plugged the lights into a standard outlet. This works out well because after dark you cannot even see the difference. Each year, components are added and removed. Some of the new elements of this year's display include new flood lights throughout the display, new yard ball ornaments, new inflatables this year and we hope to include a new song this year we think all Mainers will appreciate.
The 2006 program consisted of the following songs:
Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Wizards of Winter
The Barking Dogs - We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Elvis Presley - White Christmas
The Royal Guardsmen - Snoopy vs. The Red Baron
The Whirling Devrish - You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch
A Beach Boy's "Good Vibration" Parody
Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve Sarajevo
Auld Lang Syne
In 2007 we are adding some new songs including:
Santorini - Yanni
God Bless The USA - Lee Greenwood
Plus some other "extras"
In 2009 we have some new additions:
A new giant christmas tree that is 37ft tall
A new multicolored deer pond forest
More colors!
An entire second house joined the display adding various elements including driveway stars, an entire mini-tree forest, more arches and another giant tree!
2010
The display got a very late start largely secondary to city politics. You can goto the media links to read about that. Once we finally got started, significant weather did extensive damage to major components of the display as we were getting close to completion. However, with persistence and the help of some extremely generous friends the lights came on the evening of Saturday, December 18th! Better late than never!
2011
A scaled down display was presented
2012
A scaled down display was presented. An new roof top LED Christmas tree was displayed.
2013
Multihouse Collaborative Display rebuilt. New Driveway Arches. Mega Tree reengineered to be more weather resistent (never say weather proof on Vista Drive in Maine!). New Yard Arches. New Candy Cane Arches. New song programming done. New LED floods added.
Songs so far:
Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Wizards of Winter
The Royal Guardsmen - Snoopy vs. The Red Baron
Santorini - Yanni
Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve Sarajevo
Working On Christmas Cannon & You're a Mean One Mr Grinch
2014
Another multihouse collaborative effort. Pillar lights redone for this year. Wireframe trees had to be redone. New floodlights throughout the display. New ornament balls scattered throughout the yard. We hope to have a new song programmed as well! Currently we are playing our THX opening, Wizards of Winter, Snoopy Vs The Red Baron and Santorini.
2015
Health issues kept the original Vista Lights house from participating in this year's light display but our dedicated neighbors kept the dancing light tradition alive playing all the Christmas favorites you've enjoyed in year's past.