Frequently Asked Questions

We open two days before Thanksgiving (Tuesday, November 24, 2026 this season) and run every night through New Year’s Day, Friday, January 1, 2027. The show is on nightly from 5:00 PM to 11:00 PM.

We are at 6656 Devon Drive, Liberty Township, OH 45044, about 25 minutes north of downtown Cincinnati, just off the Liberty Way exit of I-75.

Nothing. The display is free, and there are no tickets or reservations. We do collect non-perishable food, grocery gift cards, or cash for local food banks in partnership with the Southwest Ohio Valley Women's Club, but donating is never required.

Two ways. From your car, tune the radio to 106.7 FM. It is a low-power transmitter by design, so the signal only carries a few hundred feet. If you are not picking it up, move closer to the house. If you would rather get out and walk around, we also run outdoor speakers at the display, so you do not need a radio at all.

Some newer cars (Lexus and Cadillac in particular) buffer the FM signal, which puts the audio slightly behind the lights. If your radio has a “live mode” option, turning it on fixes it. If that doesn't work and you see one of us outside, just ask. We usually have a portable radio you can borrow.

Songs play back to back, so there’s no set showtime to catch. The full playlist is currently 83 minutes of music across 31 songs. Most visitors stay for three to five songs, but you are very welcome to settle in for the whole thing.

Yes. Most visitors watch from the street with the radio on, and that is the warmest way to do it. You are also welcome to get out and walk around. The outdoor speakers mean you can still hear the show away from your car.

Yes. The tunnel is open to walk through, and there are buttons just outside that let you change what it does. If you get a good photo in there, we’d love to see it on Facebook.

Yes. Open vote-now.org on your phone and vote for the songs you want to hear. The songs with the most votes move up the list. Curious how it works? Here’s how we built it.

Text your first name to the number shown on the information sign and it will appear on the grid. Names are checked against a database of common first names, so an unusual spelling may take longer to appear. Names show below the clock within seconds and in the main display every 8–12 minutes, depending on the size of the queue. See how it works.

Please don't park in front of the traffic cones; they keep the lane open. To watch from your car, park on the opposite side of the street from the house, or along Stonington Drive, which gives the best view from inside a car. If you would rather get out and walk around the display, park further up Devon Drive so you're out of the way of the cars watching. Wherever you end up, please be considerate of our neighbors: do not block driveways, keep headlights and music down, and take your trash with you. They've put up with the traffic for decades, and we couldn't do this without them.

Traffic is generally lightest on school nights, and quietest between 5:00 and 6:30 or 10:00 and 11:00. It gets heavier the closer we get to Christmas. Christmas Eve is always very busy, because that’s the night the neighborhood gathers to watch the countdown clock hit zero. On the heaviest nights we switch to a shorter playlist to keep traffic moving.

Yes, for local food banks. There is a donation booth to the left of the display, open every night the show is on. We accept non-perishable food, grocery gift cards, or cash. You can also give online through Venmo (Verna is the treasurer). See how much visitors have given in previous years. Thank you!

We take two weeks off work in November to bring everything outside, mount it, and wire it together. The rest of the year goes to programming songs, building new pieces, soldering, and repairs. The time-lapse videos of setup show what it takes.

It varies. The most complex songs take about an hour of sequencing for every 10 seconds of music, so a four-minute song can take 16 to 24 hours. We keep a computer in the living room all year so anyone in the family can work on a song while relaxing.

Less than you’d think, since everything is LED. The yearly stats list the exact figure for each season. As for the electronics and hardware built up over the years, let us just say we could have bought a very nice new mini-van instead.

They've been great about it for a long time. Polite visitors help a lot, so thank you for being one.

No. The inside is rather tame. Believe it or not, the indoor Christmas tree is mostly static lighting.

Our unfinished basement fills up with about fifty 27-gallon storage containers as well as two walls of custom shelving for the small trees and yard stars. The larger items take up half the garage on custom shelving.

Every bulb is an individually addressable RGB pixel driven over E1.31 (sACN) by pixel controllers, sequenced in xLights and played back by FPP. The technology pages explain how the different parts of the display work.