Christmas Spectacular on Main Street!

[iamawino]

Our Last Show will be 9:00pm New Years Eve.

We would like to invite all to our Christmas Spectacular on Main Street starting Friday December the 3rd. The address is 128 North Main Street Cranbury NJ 08512.

Our shows will run on the hour starting at 6pm and the last at 9pm. Each show runs approximately 40 minutes with all the lights on after each show.

Our show this year is made up of over 35,000 lights, 15,000 feet of extension cords and 12 songs ranging from the traditional to the "whimsical" Christmas songs for the kids. NEW THIS YEAR, a 20 foot by 20 foot wall of snow flakes with 6,400 lights, there is nothing like this in any Christmas display, it is my own design. It will look great with our 20 foot high Mega Christmas tree that has over 6,000 lights!

PLEASE HELP others this Holiday season.

A lot of work goes into this display to bring joy to 1000's of people. For those who are able, Please help us help others who do not have what many of us are blessed to have. We realize there are many great charities to support, especially during the holidays, but food is such a basic necessity and there are far too many people, kids in particularly that just do not have enough. My family, Marina, Alexander and Kristopher are blessed to be able to bring this display to you but we ask kindly for your generosity to help those who need help. The next time you are at the grocery store, PLEASE get an extra $5.00, $10.00, $20.00 or more worth of food and please donate it to this worthy cause. Besides the hope of giving much needed Joy to those in the area we have again partnered up with the Princeton Alliance Church in Plainsboro this year to collect Non-Perishable food for those who may need help throughout the holiday. There will be collection bins located at the front of our property. For those who can help it would be greatly appreciated by many.

FAQ'S and Etiquette

Display Etiquette

We are happy to have you as a guest to view our display. As we and our neighbors have to live here all season (and not just visit it once or twice), we are asking you to help us out by abiding by the following -- and please pass this information on to anyone you might refer our display to:

Please do not block the street, or any driveways.

Please keep all litter in your vehicle

Please do not use driveways to turn around.

If you'd like to stay and watch the show for awhile, that's great. Just make sure you pull off the road. If you have a particularly noisy vehicle, it would really help us keep neighborhood peace if you didn't idle it for long periods of time. If you can shut it off for awhile, that would make our neighbors happy.

Similarly, please avoid honking horns (whether to show appreciation, or other reasons). If you'd like to leave us feedback we'd love to hear from you at theplanet@planetofwine.com

FAQ?s

How do you control the lights?

Everything is controlled with software and hardware from Light-O-Rama. For 2010 we have added another 64 channels for our Snowflake Wall bringing our total Music Channels to 160! For 2009 we were using 96 channels of music, our 20 foot tree uses 48 just for that. Our display for 2007 used 36 different channels, 2008 was 48. This allows us to control almost every element in our display between Red, White, Green and blue. The stars you see on the right side of the property take up 14 channels just for them. Because of how the display has to be set up, we use 15,000' of extension cords, yes three miles!!

How many lights do you have?

There were about 10,000 lights for 2007 for 2008 we had around 15,000 for 2009 we have over 25,000 and this year for 2010 we have around 35,000

How much power does it take? How much is your electric bill?

90% of our lights are LED which provides a much brighter display while at the same time conserving energy.

Most of the time only 30% of the display is on because it is animated which helps conserve power. A lot of smaller displays actually use more power than mine, because they are always "ON". The power bill for 2008 was only about $90 more than normal.

Do you have your own Radio Station? How are you transmitting to my radio?

We use a small FM transmitter the broadcasts on 89.9 FM. It only goes a short distance which allows people to listen to the music within sight of our display.

How much time does it take?

We start our Christmas light display on November the 1st. This year I hire four people to help me put up the lights on the roof. The front of the house and the yard I do myself with the help of friends.

For the 2010 season I spent about 100 hours or so designing the display which most is spent in programming the lights to the music.

How much did this cost?

???

Good question, but you can?t put a price on the amount of joy our light display brings.

What do you do for a living, are you an electrician or in the theatrical business?

No, I am a Wine Consultant. I am also the founder of www.planetofwine.com I started this November 2007 with zero knowledge of how to do a display like this. I read a lot on the internet, and had a lot of trial and error but within 30 days had 10 songs up and running!

[Guest]

Keith the kids are really looking forward to seeing your lights. Thanks you for doing this!

[Guest]

We saw this display last night. WOW it was unbelievable the kids were amazed. We will happily drop off a bin of food. From our family thank you.

[iamawino]

Thank you so much, we are so glad everyone is enjoying! Thank you for coming, now we hope the food starts pouring in, it has been very slow to date

[Guest]

Keith how is the food drive going? We dropped off a case of cans over the weekend. There were a lot of people there when we we came.

[Guest]

Is it just me or do people drop in the food bin all the stuff that they bought a long time ago and then decided they didn't want anymore?
Like the case of Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda they got at the big box discount store last Summer.
"Hey, some homeless family would LOVE this stuff".

[Guest]

[Guest]

I am appalled at the lack of class shown by the poster "observing" food donations. This particular thread should not be allowed to degenerate, as have others on this forum, due to anonymous musings.

Keith, again, thank you for the personal effort you put into organizing (1) two annual displays for the enjoyment of hte community and (2) the food collections. You are a class act.

As the previous poster stated, there are many people in desperate need that don't have the luxury of selecting among items in a stocked cupboard.

Let's all show some humility and good will.

[iamawino]

Thank you to all who understand what it is we are trying to do and all the people who benefit not only from what we are doing but all those who help us.

We certainly are not surprised there would be a post like this. Are we saddened by it...yes that would be an understatement.

For the record every item that is donated to a food banks is required to be checked if it is expired. If the item is expired it must be thrown out. If the item is expired those who knowingly bring food that is worthless has not only wasted their own time, they have wasted mine and many other people who have given their precious time to help those who need it.

I would also like to point out that most of the food that is donated to food banks is "kid" focused. There is a reason for that, a great majority of the food given is needed for kids. As anything in life I think the question we should ask ourselves is simple, would we want it ourselves.

Now, I would like to throw out a challenge to the Negative person/s who posted these comments. I would ask you to give this challenge some thought, listen to your heart, act on it and help us. From last years collections to date I figure we are about $500.00 short, my hopes for you would be to find it in your heart to make up for that difference. Please go to BJ's/Sam's/Costco/shoprite or wherever you would like and buy fresh canned food and with a loving heart bring it to us and we will make sure it will go to wonderfull people who just need a little help.

Thank you,

Keith

[Guest]

Well said Keith

[Guest]

Keith we love what you do both Halloween and especially the Christmas light show. Thank you from our family. We will definitely be bringing a good amount of food.

[Guest]

I'm in the process of putting together a box of food to drop off, but wondered if there were any items that there is a particular need for?

[iamawino]

Thank you for asking, Soups and chef boyardee are always the most requested items. Thank you so much! Keith

[iamawino]

Tonight we have our special night with Carolers, Hot Chocolate, cookies and a visit from Santa. We will also be featuring our New Song Nutrocker! All are welcome, please join us at 7:30pm.

[Guest]

would you please let me know when the last show is?

[iamawino]

We will give an update tonight on any damage that may have been done by the storm but right now things still look good. We have even plowed in the front of the house for parking! (Please use flashers for safety)

Our last show will be 9:00pm New Years Eve.