Cinco de Mayo Light Program on the Pacific Wheel

Published on April 28, 2020

The Santa Monica Pier will be red, green, and white on the evening of May 5th to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Cinco de Mayo is an annual celebration held on May 5. The date is observed to commemorate the Mexican Army’s victory over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, where a smaller Mexican army overcame a larger, better equipped French force. Cinco de Mayo is widely celebrated in Southern California and Pacific Park will join other destinations in lighting the Pacific Wheel red, white and green for the evening.

This special lighting event will take place on the evening of Tuesday, May 5th. The Ferris wheel lights can be seen from dusk until 11:30 PM each evening. Enjoy watching the light program online 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. The Pacific Wheel’s state-of-the-art lighting package was installed in 2016 and can display over 1.6 million different colors and animate patterns and icons in 24 frames per second. The energy efficient LEDs on the face of the Ferris wheel are powered by solar arrays inside Pacific Park. The light programs are curated and designed by Pacific Park staff. 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.

The Ferris wheel’s light programs can be seen nightly lighting the waters around the Santa Monica Pier and are regularly featured in news broadcasts across the country. Pacific Park accepts special lighting requests from the public as part of a sponsorship arrangement with the Park. Because of the large volume of these requests, not all submissions can be met, and the Park no longer offers pro bono lighting requests. To learn more about these and other opportunities to partner with Pacific Park, please visit www.pacpark.com/sponsorships.

Feature image courtesy of @mdcshoots.