Drive-thru light park to open in Spring
Creators envision attraction as family-friendly holiday experience during a time when traditional gatherings may not be advisable
The parking lot at Hurricane Harbor Splashtown will be home to a drive-thru wonderland with more than one million animated lights in a mile-long holiday light show featuring a 700-foot LED tunnel.
The Light Park touts itself as the largest holiday light tunnel in the world, said co-creator Matt Johnson, who had the opportunity to drive through it for the first time last week after months of planning and preparation.
“That’s really what we set out to do — to create something that was completely over the top,” Johnson said. “That tunnel is really cool.”
The Light Park is set to open at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 5, and will run through the end of the year.
A troupe of “character DJs” — Santa, DJ Snowflake, Pixel Penguin and Barry Bear — will entertain visitors as they make their way through the light show in their vehicles.
“You pull in, you turn your radio station to the frequency that we have set, and you listen to our choreographed DJ’d music that we put together,” Johnson said. “The entire light show is choreographed to that.”
With a variety of songs in queue, each drive through The Light Park is meant to be a unique visual and audio experience.
“Every time you go through the park, you’re going to catch the park on a different song and the entire park is completely animated, so you may see the same tree, but it’s going to be a different show. …You may catch the lights on ‘God Bless America’ and have the ‘God Bless America’ show, or you may catch it on ‘Let it Snow’— it’s always going to be a different look, different show, different animation series.”
The new park is an initiative by Amstad Development, a group of real estate developers building in Houston, Huntsville and College Station, where the company is based.
Johnson said planning for The Light Park has been underway for several months. The park’s creators feel it may offer a familyfriendly holiday experience at a time when traditional gatherings may not be possible.
“People really can’t get out and do a whole lot, so we were trying to find a way to entertain people in their vehicles in a safe environment. … Giving people an outlet for entertainment this year when it’s kind of difficult to do so,” Johnson said.
Affordability was another factor in the park’s creation, Johnson said. He and his family enjoy visiting parks with large holiday displays each year, but admission can sometimes be costly.
“When you go to those big parks like that, they’re so expensive and a lot of folks just can’t afford to do it, so we were trying to create something that was very rich in value,” Johnson said.
Admission to The Light Park starts at $35 a vehicle if tickets are pre-purchased. The park has a 30foot maximum length limit on vehicles. At the gate, admission per vehicle is $40.
“You can fit as many people in your vehicle as youcan legally carry; as long as TxDOT allows your vehicle to carry however many, bring them in,” Johnson said. “Hopefully that gets the entertainment dollar value stretched for each family to where they can actually afford to come see it and enjoy it.”
Johnson said The Light Park is the first project of its kind that Amstad’s undertaken. Spring was chosen as the location for the new park because of its accessibility to people around Houston. According to Johnson, the group is set to continue reopening the park in Spring each holiday season for the next several years.
“We’ll be there for a very long time,” Johnson said. “Our goal is to make it a Houston area tradition to come to The Light Park.”
The Light Park, located at 21300 Interstate 45 N in Spring, will be open 5:30 to 10 p.m. from Nov. 5 through Dec. 31.
For more information about the park and admission, visit www.thelightpark.com.