Subscribe Place Ad Buy Trib Photos Readers' Choice Contests
Jobs Homes Autos Classifieds
Trib Total Media Contact Us
2 million lights shine at Kennywood holiday attraction | TribLIVE.com
Allegheny

2 million lights shine at Kennywood holiday attraction

JoAnne Klimovich Harrop
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop
1957732_web1_PTR-KENNYWOODLIGHTS
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop | Tribune-Review
Kennywood’s Holiday Lights opens this week. The 100-foot tree has 250,000 lights.
1957732_web1_PTR-KENNYWOODLIGHTS-2
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop | Tribune-Review
Kennywood’s Holiday Lights opens this week. The Thunderbolt is in the background of one of the trees adorned with lights.
1957732_web1_PTR-KENNYWOODLIGHTS-1
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop | Tribune-Review
Kennywood’s Holiday Lights opens this week. Rides such as Noah’s Ark will be open.

Kennywood Park visitors will immediately see the lights — tunnel of brightly colored, pulsating LED bulbs.

There are 15,000 strung on three miles of aircraft cable at the West Mifflin amusement park. They shine like a prism and can be configured in 9,000 ways via a computer program.

It’s the bold entrance to Kennywood’s Holiday Lights, which opens Friday. The first evening will include fireworks at 9 p.m. and the arrival of Santa Claus on a fire truck, which will take him for a ride and drop him off near the Racer rollercoaster.

The light show takes several weeks for electrician Terry Hill and his team to install. The lights are checked each week to look for burned-out bulbs.

Hill reverses the lights toward the end of the night for guests on their way out. Festive music will be playing in the background.

“The lights look like they are floating,” Hill says. “I like to watch when people come in. They start walking through the tunnel then go back to the beginning and start snapping pictures.”

There’s a 100-foot Christmas tree adorned with 250,000 lights. Guests can enjoy some of the park’s rides such as Noah’s Ark, the Merry-Go-Round and Paratrooper as well as most of the Kiddieland attractions. Thomas Town will also be open.

There are nearly 2 million lights throughout the park. In additions, some of the rides are adorned with wreaths and presents and bows.

There are holiday lights shows plus local choir and dance groups. The movie “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 4D” will be shown along with a daily tree-lighting ceremony, a magic show and Parker’s Dance Party.

Kennywood Holiday Lights run Friday, Saturday and Sunday through Dec. 22 and Dec. 26-30. Hours are 5 to 9 p.m.

Ride availability is weather permitting.

Tickets are $20.99.

JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact JoAnne at 724-853-5062, [email protected] or via Twitter .

TribLIVE commenting policy

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.