Pacific Park’s Memorial Day Light Program in Red White and Blue for Memorial Day Weekend

Published on May 18, 2020

The Ferris wheel will be lit up all weekend with patterns of red, white, and blue and feature an animated American flag waving 130 ft over the ocean.

Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering, honoring, and mourning the military personnel that have died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. The holiday is now observed on the last Monday of May each year. The Pacific Wheel will be red, white and blue and will feature a waving American flag all weekend long.

This special lighting event will take place nightly Friday, May 22nd to Monday May 25th. 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.

Lighting the Pier in red, white, and blue has become a tradition at Pacific Park for Memorial Day. The second-generation light package installed in 2008 could display a flag rendering in red white in blue, but the effect was more of an impression of a flag. The new design, first debuted with the wheel lights in May of 2016, features a 24 frames per second animation of a flag waving in the wind. Additionally, the wheel will display colorful animations of hearts and stars and other patterns all in red, white and blue.

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 @dougbasscomedy.