See an 80-foot taco on the Pacific Wheel for National Taco Day

Published on September 25, 2020

The Pacific Wheel will show some love for tacos on National Taco Day.

National Taco Day is something we can all celebrate together. While Pacific Park can’t hold it’s annual National Taco Eating Championship this year due to COVID-19, the Park is still celebrating delicious tacos with a special light show on the Santa Monica Pier Ferris wheel on National Taco Day which lands on Sunday, October 4th. As one of LA’s most loved dishes, you can find an LA street-style taco almost every corner you look.

For the past 2 years, Pacific Park partnered with Major League Eating to present the National Taco Eating Championship and discover who could eat the most LA street-style carnitas tacos in 8 minutes. Joey Chestnut won the championship both years in a row, eating an incredible 62 tacos in 2018 and beating his own record by feasting on 82 tacos in 2019. Several other well-known major league eaters competed against Joey, such as Gideon Oji, Miki Sudo, and LA’s very own Mary Bowers.

Pacific Park will celebrate National Taco Day with a special taco-themed light program on the Ferris wheel on the evening of Sunday, October 4th. The Ferris wheel lights can be seen from dusk until 11:30 PM each evening. Enjoy watching the light program from the comfort of your own home on our live-streaming web cams 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 ABC7.