It's About Time!
Welcome to your November 2007 edition of the
PlanetChristmas
newsletter! It is published regularly and covers relative topics for the
Christmas decorating enthusiast.
Here's what you can read about in this November 2007
newsletter:
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While
many of us have been working on our home light displays, the shopping malls have
also been putting up all of their fancy decorations. This November, with
plenty of anticipation and a willingness to stay up past my normal early
bedtime, I went out on more road trips to see Santa's professional elves at work
at several different indoor and outdoor malls.
Almost every mall seems to have a centerpiece Christmas
tree. People assembling these gigantic mall trees range from stage riggers
currently not touring, landscaping professionals or mall maintenance people.
In the picture to the right, you can see the steel structure of a typical tree,
made of two foot tall concentric rings bolted together and firmly anchored to
the ground. The tree can grow to almost any height just by adding more two
foot rings at the bottom. Also notice the the huge lifts used to assemble
these trees. (I got checked out in one that could go up 120'... but I
chickened out six inches off the ground... riding those things is not for
everyone .)
One outdoor mall in Florida has a 50' tall tree originally
covered with 60,000 clear, incandescent mini-lights drawing almost 200 amps of
power. The lights were stripped off by a crew of 17 people and replaced
with 90,000 colored C6 type LEDs that would draw a maximum of 66 amps... and
they computerized the tree so even less power was consumed. Getting a
third more lights and only using a third of the power is where the magic of LEDs
really shines!
Stepping
Inside the tree is truly an odd experience. You have to stretch yourself
out and slither through a two foot tall opening. The first time isn't too
bad. The tenth time gets pretty old. See the lower half of my body
through the tree structure in the picture to the left.
The biggest challenge is connecting all those Christmas
lights inside the tree. The professional stage riggers climb around the
inside like monkeys and hang from harnesses (look closely at the center in the
non-flattering picture to the right.) In one tree, there were 1,800 individual
strings of lights that had to be connected and in just the right order for the
computer sequencing to work correctly. My hat goes off to these very
patient and height loving people.
The finished tree is always something that chokes me up
just a little bit. Take that one step further and the computerized trees
almost make me cry when I listen to the comments as people walk by. But
what really makes me chuckle is being inside the tree and talking to people on
the outside... how odd that must be to the stranger passing by .)
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I had the opportunity to
checkout Bronner's in Frankenmuth, Michigan (http://www.bronners.com/).
All I can say is... WOW! Bronner's says it is the world's largest
Christmas store and I certainly believe them. Even though they have about
every Christmas type item you can think of to buy, I spent most of my time
wandering around looking up at the ceiling to see all the various Christmas
props and displays. The good news is Bronner's is worth the trip... the
bad news is it seems to be close to nothing so it really is an effort. The
town is delightful and tourist oriented, much like Gatlinburg at PLUS2007.
Bronner's is worth putting on the list of things you want to do during your
lifetime.
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The official 2007
PlanetChristmas
caps and shirts have arrived as well as the yard signs.
See all the details at
http://www.planetchristmas.com/Merchandise.htm. Money collected from
these sales goes toward
PlanetChristmas and PLUS.
I'm seeing a bit of irritation in the
PlanetChristmas
forums about service from our vendors. I've been
traveling around visiting many of the
PlanetChristmas
suppliers over the last few months and can give you some insight about
the business.
PlanetChristmas vendors aren't
Fortune 100 companies. They make most of their money the last quarter of
the year. For nine months things are calm and customer service is easy.
The companies ramp up for the seasonal rush but there are peaks during the
season when their resources simply max out.
In the sophisticated Christmas display world, November seems to be the most
stressful time for our vendors since professional installations want their
lights on a week or two before Thanksgiving and the rest of us want them on the
day after Thanksgiving.
What's the solution?
Well... our vendors could hire more support/sales people and have them available
during November... but that isn't always practical from a business expense
viewpoint.
As for me... plan ahead, order stuff early and assume all vendor support will be
spotty around Thanksgiving
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Four
tips this month.
If you have a chance to get to Disneyworld in Florida and
see Cinderella's castle at night... do it! It's covered in shimmering
white lights and looks like ice. Simply stunning. You'll get
all kinds of great ideas for future Christmas displays while strolling through
the park. See details at
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/parks/specialEvents?id=MickeysVeryMerryChristmasPartySpecialEventPage
HGTV will begin showing their Christmas shows in early
December and several
PlanetChristmas community members
will be featured. I'll admit to getting some incredible ideas watching
these shows. Start by looking for the schedules at
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/spcl_prsntn/episode/0,1806,HGTV_3909_47483,00.html
or
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/dc_holidays_occasions/article/0,1793,HGTV_3455_5747186,00.htm
l
Be sure and checkout the Showing Off section of the
PlanetChristmas
to see how others decorate for Christmas. While you're
looking around, be sure and send
PlanetChristmas
a picture and description of your place!
http://www.planetchristmas.com/ShowingOff.htm
And finally, your Christmas display is out there for
everyone to enjoy so it must be time to just sit back and rest. Not so
fast! Get out that digital camera and go around during the day taking
pictures of all the "behind the scenes" stuff of your display. Take plenty
of close-ups. These pictures can be invaluable in future years when you're
trying to remember how you did something way back in 2007.
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Got any juicy bits of gossip you want to share with the
PlanetChristmas
community? Send a tip to
csmith@PlanetChristmas.com
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Many of us have become very creative with our
unique signature automatically added to the end of each post we make in the
PlanetChristmas
Forums (My Account/Edit Profile/Signature). You can have
pictures, links, colored text and just all kinds of cool attention grabbers...
but let's be careful. As we enter the busy Christmas season, the
bigger/flashier your signature, the more irritating it becomes to others.
Let's keep it simple and refrain from blatant advertising. My
PlanetChristmas
Forums signature is below as an example.
Chuck Smith at
http://www.PlanetChristmas.com
Don't forget our three PlanetChristmas rules: [color=red][b]Positive, family
friendly and Christmas centric[/b][/color]
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The
PlanetChristmas community has
experienced tremendous growth. Our three fundamental rules of family
friendly, positive and Christmas centric guide what we say and do. The
real key to our community is a willingness to exchange information so others can
have better displays. Come join us!
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Talking about a gold
mine of information, this is the place! If you haven't found it yet, go to
http://www.planetchristmas.com/talk.htm.
We've recently added more forums and made it a little easier to get around.
Once you're a member, feel free to change the look and feel of the forums by
going to "My Account/Preferences/Board Theme." Don't forget to update your
profile so others can learn about your display. Also remember the part of
the forums you can see when not logged in is indexed by the Internet search
engines, but once you're a registered member, many new forums open up but are
invisible to the search engines. PlanetChristmas
believes strongly in protecting your privacy.
In some cases you'll also be seeing some
Google ads at the very bottom of the PlanetChristmas
forum pages and along the right side of other PlanetChristmas
web pages. We're simple trying to defray some
PlanetChristmas expenses but realize how
"in-your-face" some ads are on the Internet. We have purposely made the
ads small and out-of-the-way. You'll notice on some forum pages the Google
ads are for some sort of PHP products. What's up with that? These
particular pages can only be seen by PlanetChristmas
forum members, Google can't gather ad clues from the PHP code running the forums
so it gives some PHP ads. Now you know.
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The PlanetChristmas
radio station is still on-line and available to anyone with a fast Internet
connection to tap into. We now have a special feed from NORAD helping
track Santa Claus. Find the details at
http://www.planetchristmas.com/PCRadio2007.htm
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Have a suggestion for a main topic or want to write an article
for a future PlanetChristmas
newsletter? Send me an email: csmith@planetchristmas.com
If you know someone that really should subscribe to your newsletter, send them
to
http://planetchristmas.com/lists/?p=subscribe
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Next time: look forward to more Christmas
decorating tips.
Chuck Smith of
PlanetChristmas
