Odyssey Fun World Plans to Light Up for Christmas

The light show at Ni Miele's house last Christmas.


By Bob Bong
Southland Savvy

Odyssey Fun World in Tinley Park wants to shed light on Christmas this year. Sorry, make that, shed 100,000 lights on the holiday.

The arcade is putting together a light show on the side of its building that will start at 6 p.m. tonight and last through the first week of January.

“We hope it will be the first Christmas lights display for many years to come,” said Clint Paraday, general manager of the family arcade at Oak Park and Harlem avenues.

The lights will twinkle and dance to music as part of a light show designed by Nic Miele, who has been putting on light shows at his home in Batavia for the past three years.

The arcade will remain open as usual when the light show is on and the show will run even on nights the arcade is closed, Paraday said.

“The show will start out about 15 minutes long,” said Miele. “But it will get longer through the season as we add more songs.”

“The lights will move to Christmas music as well as some top 40,” said Miele. “Each song takes about eight hours to program into the computer.”

Paraday said people will be able to stop and watch the show and listen to music on outdoor speakers or tune in to 87.9 FM and listen to the music on the radio.

“There will be LED bars that will display messages, show the lyrics of songs playing and broadcast videos,” said Miele.

The lights are the same kind that you would put on your house, said Paraday.

“We got them at a nice discount from Lowe’s in Orland Park,” said Paraday.

The lights and music are controlled by computers.

“We came out with a big Halloween display,” said Paraday, referring to Odyssey’s recent Fun Farm and Corn Maize. “We decided to do something big for Christmas. Nobody else around here does anything like this. We hope everyone enjoys it.”