Year of the Snake Ferris Wheel Lighting at Santa Monica Pier

Published on January 23, 2025

Join us for Year of the Snake Ferris wheel lighting at Santa Monica Pier. In recognition of Lunar New Year, Pacific Park will light up the Pacific Wheel in colors of red and gold from Tuesday, January 28 to Thursday, January 30. 

Millions of people around the world celebrate Lunar New Year, the first day of the Lunisolar calendar. And in Chinese tradition, 2025 is the Year of the Snake. The first day of this wonderfully serpentine period falls on Wednesday, January 29.  To mark the occasion, we’ll be lighting the Pacific Wheel red and gold with a golden snake design on January 28.

Year of the Snake Ferris Wheel Lighting at Santa Monica Pier

Enjoy this special lighting event on the evening of Tuesday, January 28 until Thursday, January 30. You can see the Ferris wheel lights  from dusk until 11:35 PM each evening. Enjoy watching the light program online at www.pacpark.com/live.

Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year is one of the most important celebrations of the year among East and Southeast Asian cultures, including Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean communities. It celebrates the arrival of spring in some regions, and the beginning of a new year on the lunisolar calendar. Many see it as a time to reunite with family.

Also known as the Spring Festival, Lunar New Year is marked by many traditions. Some families decorate windows with red paper cuttings and write verses expressing auspicious wishes. Some shop for holiday goods and spend time giving their houses an extra clean. A beloved tradition is the Lunar New Year’s Eve dinner, which often includes symbolic dishes such as whole fish for good luck and fortune. On the fifteenth day of the holiday, known at the Lantern Festival, children carry lanterns around the neighborhood and eat tangyuan, or sweet glutinous rice balls.

Year of the Snake

The snake is the sixth of the twelve animals that appear in the Chinese zodiac. The others are Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig.

 

WHAT:
Special Lighting of the Pacific Wheel for Year of the Snake

WHEN:
Tuesday, January 28 to Thursday, January 30
dusk (around 5 PM) to midnight

WHERE:
Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier

See the lights from home at www.pacpark.com/live.

Pacific Park regularly programs the Ferris wheel to display seasonal programing and themed light designs for holidays and special occasions. We installed the Pacific Wheel’s state-of-the-art lighting package in 2016.It can display over 1.6 million different colors and animate patterns and icons in 24 frames per second.

Solar arrays inside Pacific Park power the energy-efficient LEDs on the face of the Ferris wheel. Pacific Park staff  curate and designe the light programs. Because each design is manually animated, some designs can take hours of programming. The aim is to provide fun, high-energy, and sometimes whimsical designs to entertain guests on the Santa Monica Pier and surrounding beaches.

 

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Feature image courtesy of @pacpark