Disney’s Spectacle of Dancing Lights: By the numbers

The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights is one of the most popular holiday events at Walt Disney World.

Each night at dusk, the lights are turned on at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It is impossible to take a picture that shows the magnitude of Disney’s dancing lights display. It completely covers the buildings in the theme park’s Streets of America section. So, to try to give you the big picture, here are some of the numbers that go into making this display.

1,000 – The number of lights this display started with when Jennings Osborne put some lights up outside his Little Rock, Arkansas, home at his daughter’s request. When the exhibit grew into millions of lights, it drew too much traffic to his neighborhood and was moved to Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida.

16 – The number of years that the spectacle has been lighting up the night at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, where it was first displayed in 1995.

5,000,000 – The number of individual lights now in the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights display.

350 – The number of miles the strings of lights would cover if laid end to end.

40 – The approximate number of “hidden Mickeys” in the lights display. Disney designers add Mickey shapes to the display, and many guests try to find them all.

%Gallery-108574%1 – The number of black cats in the Christmas light display. When the Osborne family’s lights were transported to Walt Disney World, a cat from the family’s Halloween display wound up with the Christmas stuff. Each year, the Disney designers put the cat in a different location in the display for guests to find.

66 – The number of machines used to make the “snowflakes” that fall periodically during the display, according to Studios Central.

5 – The number of songs the Christmas lights are programmed to “dance” to. This year’s songs include “Christmas is Starting Now” by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

3 – The number of “Phineas & Ferb” characters heard in the audio track that plays on the Streets of America. A bit with Phineas, Ferb and Dr. Doofenshmirtz has been added to the Spectacle of Dancing Lights this year.

21,000 – The approximate number of hours that Disney employees work to install the display.

53 – The number of nights that Disney’s dancing lights display can be seen this holiday season. It runs through Jan. 3, 2011.