The Magic Behind Enchant Christmas

One of the biggest and newest events this holiday season is Tropicana Field’s Enchant Christmas! Fortunately, FLATE had a wonderful opportunity to interview Dave Fortune, the Director of Construction, to learn more about the creation of St. Petersburg area’s Enchant Christmas! Dave shared various interesting facts such as the layout of the team, information on the lights, advanced technology behind Enchant Christmas, and how the skating trail was built! Are you ready to explore the magic behind Enchant Christmas?

Enchant Christmas had a team of workers under 100 people a day which included stage hands, technicians, electricians, ice rink helpers, security, hosting staff, publicists, and folks that helped to ship and receive items. The Enchant Christmas project is split into four departments that are as follows: Creative Design, Construction, Technology, Sales and Marketing. Events generally begin with several designs which are turned into an overall plan and handed to the event team to produce the show. The event team then coordinates with other sections of the company to create the assets for the show and turn it into a wonderful, enchanted environment that the community can enjoy. To ensure that the venue is not overcrowded, the Marketing and Sales team has assorted the tickets by time slots so that no more than 4,000 guests are attending at one time.

Enchant 2019. All Rights Reserved.

All the beautiful lighted figures guests will see at Enchant Christmas is created by the Shine Lighting Group, Inc which is located in Vancouver, Canada. Shine Lighting Group, Inc. has served Canada and the United States since 2010 and is owned by the same person who produces Enchant Christmas. Each light uses 12-14 watts and there is approximately two and half million light nodes that illuminates Tropicana Field. The center tree, alone, has 150,000 nodes of lights and reaches a height of 80 ft. which took two days for workers to build. The center tree had to be built in sections using a crane starting with the top of the tree and continue the build from the center to the bottom piece. Branches are placed in sockets located in the poles that create the shape of the tree.

To further enhance the experience for guests, Enchant Christmas uses analog and digital lighting effects that features RGB (Red, Green, Blue) lighting technology! Using RGB technology allows Enchant to create more than 50 million accurate hues of color, which would usually be harder to obtain. The RGB technology is currently being used in the 120 ft. light maze tunnel and Enchant plans on exhibiting more features of RGB technology in future years! Dave Fortune states that, “RBG Lighting technology can create ripple effects or waves when someone touches the light. In addition, you can activate lights using voice activation, touch screens, or program a certain action to trigger pre-recorded video content for the guests.”

Enchant 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Enchant Christmas also has a skating trail which is similar to an ice rink, where they have a chilling unit that takes a liquid called glycol that is pumped though tubes and piping to create ice. Since glycol is receptive to hot and cold temperatures, Enchant Christmas heats up the glycol to create condensation and then quickly chills it to create ice. This is a process that is continuously done until there is a few inches of ice for guests to skate on. The dashboards on the side of the ice helps to keep the ice from spreading out to other areas, and the assets surrounding the skating trail helps to make it look beautiful.

Before we concluded the interview with Enchant Christmas, Dave Fortune said, “One thing that I find important to use is the grass-root approach. We want to be a part of the community. In fact, most of the staff is part of the St. Petersburg area and it’s important for us that the community is a part of the project. On a personal note, I love St. Pete and it’s a great community to be a part of!”

If you are interested in visiting Enchant Christmas for the holidays, tickets are still on sale until December 29, 2019 at https://enchantchristmas.com/stpete.

Image Sources:
Enchant Christmas, Enchant , 2019, https://enchantchristmas.com/stpete-media-kit-images.