What does it take to pull together NoCo’s Winter Wonderland?
Here’s some fast facts to wow your friends and family as you drive through CYO’s 15 minutes of seasonal magic.
The process begins June 1st with a hope and a prayer — a.k.a. our new feature brainstorm meeting! Templates are designed and sent to Metal Distributors for plasma cutting. From there, the CYO Sportsmen add lights.
On September 1, the CYO Elves and a whole pile of volunteers buckle down & get to work. There are new features to light-wrap and program, previous features to pull out of storage, and 500,000 lights on string to untangle and check (one light goes out, they all go out!).
From there, the frames are laid in their hopeful positions for the season. Five to eight people are needed to pull each feature upright, only to find we’re missing a specific screw. When all parts are procured, the feature is set up, staked down, then viewed from a proper angle. Only then is it determined that everything needs to move 3 feet to the right. The process begins again!
All in all, we estimate it takes 1,500 hours to turn CYO into a magical Winter Wonderland. Special thanks to the following organizations for hours and hours of their productive volunteer time:
CYO Sportsmen
Can We Get A Hardware Store Sponsor?
When you drive through NoCo’s Winter Wonderland, you’re looking at over 500,000 lights — that is ONE MILLION if you count the reflections in the ponds. The highest lights are 50 feet in the air.
To support those lights, it takes:
Four miles of extension cords
Over 500 plug-in sites
We start with 4,000 replacement lights in September . . . but by December, we’ve probably purchased 8,000.
1,500 zip ties
3,900 feet of electrical tape, some of which is still stuck to our Facility Manager’s jeans – we haven’t told him.
NEW IN 2024: We’ve gone electric! To electrify 500,000 lights and 19 light features over a mile loop, you’ll be driving over 35,00o linear feet of underground electrical wire. That’s 6.5 miles of wire! Read the story here.
Candy Cane Lane was hand-crafted by our CYO Sportsmen using 460 ft of PVC pipe.
2,400 hand warmers for our staff and volunteers. (Hey, you too can volunteer at NoCo Winter Wonderland!)
How many trips to the hardware store? We have NO IDEA.
Best of all? 40,000 candy canes for all the boys and girls that visit NoCo Winter Wonderland.
We can’t wait to see you — book your ticket today.