Sam’s Town’s Holiday Water and Laser Show gets an upgrade

This year's Holiday Water and Laser Show at Mystic Falls Park is expected to be the biggest and brightest yet. Sam's Town has spruced up the park and refitted the attraction with new lasers and animated animals all decked out for the holidays.

The park is dominated by a giant faux mountain and waterfall surrounded by hotel rooms on three sides and glass elevators running up the fourth. The open space in the middle features gentle curving trails, running streams and live trees and plants. A glass roof allows natural light into the space.

Year-round, nightly shows feature animatronic animals, mixed with dancing lasers and water.

Thanks to recent upgrades, the lasers are a little brighter and the animals are a little more animated.

"We used gas tube lasers originally," said Steve Martin, a member of the maintenance crew that keeps the park up and running. "We've moved to solid-state lasers. They're a lot brighter and use less power."

Martin said the old gas tube lasers put out about 15 watts of white light, then that was run through a crystal to get the different colors. That led to considerable light loss, and the outgoing lasers were 4 watts at best. The new lasers use three lasers of red, blue and green and mix colors much like a television does. Although they put out only 8 watts, there's no crystal in between, so all that wattage is seen. The old system was 6 feet long with an additional support system just to cool it. The new lasers can be held in one hand.

In addition to the lasers, the other lighting has been upgraded and made more intense, flexible and cost-efficient by converting to an LED-based system.

"Some of the LED fixtures have seven different colors, so you get a richer mix instead of just using red, green, blue," said Donald Leffert with DTB Tech Services, the company that installed the new lighting. "You can get deep indigo and other really saturated colors."

When the holiday show starts, the waterfall slowly turns off, and fog is pumped out of several places.

"With the renovations, we've added fog machines on top of the Ram's Head Bar," said John Sou, Sam's Town's vice president and general manager. "Now you can see the lasers of the show from just about anywhere in the park."

For the holiday show, the animatronic animals are synchronized with the music, bobbing, nodding and in one case roaring in time to The Barking Dogs' version of "Jingle Bells." The animatronic highlight is when the 8-foot grizzly bear rears up on its hind legs and lip-syncs to "Blue Christmas."

"We've run it a few times testing the equipment, and it's a real crowd pleaser," said Melanie Mabry, Sam's Town's marketing director. "It makes me laugh every time."

The show is rounded out by dancing fountain effects, laser-drawn animated images and hats for all the animals, from the howling wolf atop the mountain to the tiny bluebird. The icing on the cake, almost literally, is the snow.

"It's theatrical snow, and we've got it set up so it's pretty high up," Sou said. "It gets to float down and looks very natural."

When asked if the snow wasn't something you should lick or catch on your tongue, Mabry laughed.

"That's a good policy no matter what."

For the record, the artificial snow is pretty and harmless, but you wouldn't want it on your cornflakes.

The free 15-minute winter laser light spectacular is scheduled at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. daily.

Cowboy Santa is set to be on hand from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and from noon to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Photos with Santa are $11 to $17.

For more information, visit samstown.com or call 456-7777.

Contact Sunrise/Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.