Magic of Lights event ready for another season

As Thanksgiving comes around the corner, Christmas is sneaking up right behind and more cities in Lorain County are preparing for guests to enjoy yearly holiday events.

Staff at Victory Sports Park, 7777 Victory Lane in North Ridgeville, is teaming up with FunGuys Events which promotes the Magic of Lights event, for its second year.

Both companies are finishing up their decorations and light displays that complete the mile-long drive-through and are ready to open to the public Nov. 17 for another year of holiday fun.

While enjoying the holidays without leaving your car, the drivethrough holiday light show features more than 400 spectacular displays using the latest LED technology and digital animations.

Brett Pegler, marketing manager for FunGuys’ Magic of Lights, said that with their first year being a success they have made many improvements to make the second year even better.

“Last year (Magic of Lights) leased the lights through a separate company,” he said. “Now we have brand new lights from a manufacturing plant in Chicago that builds all displays, welds all metal designs, creates all of their artwork and puts the lights together from scratch. The lights are brighter and displays are brand new.”

Pegler added that the money from last year’s profits made the show more efficiently run with building all lights and adding special features as well as improving the production of the show to taking care of their staff.

Christy Angie, the marketing communications manager of Victory Sports Park, said the second-year collaboration with FunGuys made the first year turn out great with a attendance of about 12,000 cars, and they are all very happy about the outcome. She said she hopes with the many improvements in their equipment, displays and promotions, the event meets a goal of 20,000 cars this holiday season.

Some of the promotions Victory Park will offer this year to bring more guests in and make their time more enjoyable will be nights such as their opening weekend, she said. If someone brings a non-perishable food item they get $5 off of the gate fee as well as every Tuesday there is a Jack Frost Donut night where the first 200 people who come in get a doughnut. Many more promotions will be offered during the event.

According to Angie, the park has been open since 2008, offering year-round tournaments, concerts and other events throughout all months of the year.

“With Magic of Lights we are trying to build an event that becomes an annual family tradition for families across northeast Ohio,” she said. “We are proud of what we accomplished especially with all of the improvements for this year and excited to see all of the different promotions we can do and that we can help out UH Rainbow Babies & Children with a portion of the proceeds we receive.”

To complete the full display in the park, staff from the FunGuys company and from Victory Park work together for the annual event.

This year, students from North Ridgeville’s Ranger High-Tech Academy helped create some of their own light displays for the event and even had the chance Nov. 15 to get a sneak peak of their work two days before opening to the public.

Cassidy Miller, a sixthgrade Ranger High-Tech Academy student, made one of the present displays with her classmates which was made out of wood and acrylic. This has been her first time having work of her own displayed in public and she said it made her feel cool that people get to see it.

Her father Tim Miller said he likes to see his daughter involved in a project where she got to have the idea and build it up from scratch.

“The STEM academy is pretty neat, offers their students a lot of tools for events just like this,” he said.

The Magic of Lights event begins Nov. 17 and runs through New Year’s Day, welcoming public seven days out of the week from dusk to 10 p.m.