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Residential Street versus a residential street

Image: Disney

One of the people who heard the Little Rock Christmas lights story was named Bruce Laval. He happened to be a vice president in what was then known as the Theme Parks division of The Walt Disney Company. Laval assigned one of his employees, John Phelan, to make first contact. He was a show director at Walt Disney World, which you can see if you read this 2011 Disney Parks article about Jennings Osborne. In the story, Phelan reveals that in 1995, The Walt Disney Company tasked him with the responsibility of bringing a new Christmas pageant to Hollywood Studios or, as it was then known, Disney-MGM Studios.

The decision was understandable given that the other two Orlando gates, Magic Kingdom and Epcot, already offered majestic holiday festivities. Already perceived as the least of the three parks, Hollywood Studios needed to offer stronger entertainment to overcome its reputation as a half-day park. In watching the news, Phelan received inspiration.

The situation represented kismet at its finest. In Orlando, the leading family vacation destination in the world needed a new Christmas exhibition. In Little Rock, a frustrated entrepreneur owned literally millions of lights and decorations that the state court banned him from displaying. Everything seemed so perfect and yet an odd hiccup almost prevented the parties from forming a partnership.

Jennings Osborne was of course familiar with Walt Disney World. Everyone in America is, and most southerners vacation there at least once a decade. The Osborne clan had more money than the average southerner, which means that they were able to visit often. The close-knit family adored the place. The news that The Walt Disney Company wanted to host their light show should have put them over the moon. Alas, this is the one about the misunderstanding.

Disney utilizes tongue-in-cheek naming conventions for their parks. When you enter Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, you walk down Main Street, a road that is relatable to everyone. Sustaining that philosophy, Hollywood Studios includes a place called Residential Street. When Phelan pitched Jennings on transporting the Osborne show to central Florida, he announced his intention to locate it right there on Residential Street, a central location of the theme park.

Osborne, like a lot of casual Disney fans, didn’t appreciate the distinction. What he heard was that his majestic family heritage of lights wasn’t special to Disney. Instead, they would host it on a standard residential street. It was a Disney homonym that underscores the importance of capital letters, but those are difficult to emphasize in speech.

For his part, Phelan felt understandable confusion about the cool reception to his idea. He expected the Osborne family to embrace this turn of events as serendipitous. Had he not pressed Osborne further by writing a follow-up letter, the entire display could have easily never moved to Hollywood Studios. Thankfully, the parties worked through the miscommunication, saving the Osborne family lights for years to come.  Phelan discovered his good fortune in a hilarious way. When he returned from his own family vacation, boxes of Christmas decorations were waiting in his office. Osborne had excitedly shipped them the moment they realized the show was moving to Walt Disney World.

A Hollywood spectacle

Image: Disney

From The Walt Disney Company’s perspective, the Jennings lights were a gift from above. The corporation notoriously planned and plotted everything. With the Hollywood Studios lights show, however, someone else had already done the initial shopping for them. The Osborne family shipped everything they thought Disney could use. The transported decorations required four 18-wheel Mayflower Moving Vans to transport farther south to Florida. And the price was right for any corporation: free.

The already rich Osborne clan had no need for money. They simply wanted to vacation at Walt Disney World over the holidays to visit the lights that they loved so dearly. The company agreed to host them free of charge onsite whenever they wanted during the holiday season. Disney feasibly could have spent millions of dollars on a light show. Instead, one fell right in their lap and from Disney fans to boot.

A game of cat and mouse

Image: Disney

Because Disney is in the habit of plussing attractions, they never rested on Osborne Jennings’ laurels. Instead, they constantly added new pieces to the collection. They did so partially to entertain the multi-millionaire. Cast members played a game of cat and mouse with the entrepreneur they grew to love, changing the location of some of his favorite items while introducing others. They knew that he would walk past every section, meticulously inspecting that it met his lofty standards, which were every bit as high as Disney’s.

An adorable game even developed by happenstance. While sifting through the literal millions of items from the Osborne Lights boxes, they found a black cat decoration. The Disney employees puzzled over the appropriate location of this oddity. Eventually, they quit trying to guess and simply asked the curator himself. When queried, Osborne busted up with laughter, confessing that it was a Halloween decoration that his family accidentally misplaced in the wrong storage container.

The cast members ran with the joke, choosing to place the cat among the Christmas decorations. Osborne again experienced delight when he discovered the hidden treasure. From that point forward, hiding the Halloween cat became an annual tradition. The delightful game reinforced the perfection of the lights permanently residing at Walt Disney World.

By the numbers

Image: Disney

When placed in their proper locations, the lights and other decorations cover 10 miles of Hollywood Studios. The wizards at Disney also found a way to disguise most of the extension cords needed to provide power to the breathtaking display. Those cords are approximately 30 miles long. Remember that when you look at your mess of tangled cords next time.

Putting up the lights is an ordeal. Disney spends 20,000 man-hours each year on the project, the equivalent of 500 40-hour work weeks. And the power required to keep the lights on is staggering. Disney estimates they utilize 800,000 watts during the six weeks that the show runs each year from mid-November until the start of January. Disney eventually discovered a way to mitigate the costs of the electricity. They persuaded Sylvania to sponsor the display in 2005.

The year prior to the sponsorship, a major change occurred. After 10 years of operation on Residential Street, the demolition of that area to make room for Lights! Motors! Action! Extreme Stunt Show necessitated relocation of The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. At this point, it moved to Streets of America, a title that likely also confused Jennings Osborne at first.

Originally, fans worried that the show might go away. Those fears proved unfounded at the time. As late as 2011, just before tragedy befell him, Osborne noted in an interview that people caused too much fuss about the future of his exhibition. He pointed out that Disney had just extended the contract yet again, and he expected them to continue to do so. After all, Disney fans across the globe loved to visit during the holidays to enjoy his family's decorations.

Death and taxes

Image: Disney

Alas, the innate largesse of the microbiologist eventually proved his undoing. It also had help. No man who loves barbecued ribs that much is assured of a long and healthy life. On July 27, 2011, Jennings Osborne died of a heart ailment. He was 67 years old. By that time, he’d spent almost half of his life enriching the lives of others with his lights show.

Even before Osborne died, however, his natural generosity had cost the man his fortune. He paid for holiday lights for government exhibitions in more than 25 cities across the country. He frequently provided financial aid to people struck by tragedy. He also paid for the funeral arrangements when locals informed him of people who couldn’t. Even the barbecues that increased his chances of heart problems also earned enough in charitable donations to feed thousands of indigent people in his state. He was a hero to his very core and the very definition of someone who would literally give a stranger the shirt off his back.

After his demise, the long-rumored financial woes about Jennings Osborne proved correct. The court system, unkind to him even after his death, ruled that his estate was several million dollars in debt. It was a stunning financial collapse, particularly in light of the fact that he sold his company for $24 million in 2004. Facing bankruptcy, the family was left with no other choice. They eventually had to sell the three houses from which The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights originated.

Even in his death, he found a way to give back to the state of Arkansas. A buyer at auction ceded the properties Osborne once owned there to Redfield, and the eventual earnings from the resale of the main property earned $890,000 for a city with an annual operating budget of $650,000.

In 2015, Mitzi and Breezy received additional bad news. The Walt Disney Company’s announced Star Wars and Pixar Land expansions required part of the tract of land ordinarily reserved for The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. People had already deduced the implication of the construction work at Hollywood Studios even before the announcement.

On September 11, 2015, Disney confirmed that they would discontinue the beloved Osborne lights show on January 3, 2016. In December of 2016, for the first time in 30 years, the Jennings clan will not display a lights show at either their former home on Robinwood Street or their adopted home at Hollywood Studios. Truly, it’s the end of an era.

Perhaps the saddest part of the closing is that the family who only recently lost their patriarch is now forced to watch his legacy die. And that comes on the heels of his overly generous nature leaving him millions of dollars in debt, meaning that the homes that embodied a key part of his legacy are no longer owned by the family.

Jennings Osborne was an innovator, a philanthropist, and an American original. His impact on the citizens of Little Rock, Arkansas, once appeared to be his legacy. Then, his breathtaking exhibition of dancing lights transferred to Walt Disney World. At that point, he became a signature part of the annual holiday tradition of many families. Millions will miss The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, and Disney would be wise to take those millions of lights out of storage and put them back on display sooner rather than later.

 
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Comments

Disney, Why would you do this? Possibly my most relaxing time in any of your parks was with the Osborn Family lights show. Please reconsider this mistake. TY, Joe.

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