Despite fewer production days and some mild seasonal weather, Light's On Stratford welcomed 76,563 people to the city for the annual winter festival.
"We totally changed the way the season works this year," said Kaileigh Krysztofiak, GM of Lights on Stratford. "We found it to be an incredible success from both a patron point of view and from our team's point of view."
Managed by Destination Stratford, Lights On Stratford used the downtown core and park system to bring together art and interactive lights installations.
Organizers shortened what they call production days, when the lights are on, to Thursday to Sunday, from a seven-day-per-week model. Despite having three less days for visitors to enjoy the art instillations, attendance figures were only slightly lower than last year, Krysztofiak told StratfordToday during an interview on Saturday morning.
"We had an awful snowstorm on what we thought would be our busiest weekend and we also had a lot of rain, we get less people on super rainy days."
Krysztofiak said the Dandelion art instillation at Market Square was a popular addition this year. She particularly enjoyed patrons discussing the interactive light and sound show and how each explained their interpretation.
On Tom Patterson Island, the Journey to the Stars Sun and Planets display was stationed with the Lunar Lamp Posts, featuring interactive moons at different heights. Krysztofiak said the Lunar Lamp Posts appealed to young and old, and it was a delight to see all age groups enjoy the experience.
The festival included skate dates at William Allman Memorial Arena and hop-on, hop-off shuttle buses, running every 15 minutes.
Overall feedback was overwhelmingly positive, the general manager said.
"It is so correlated to the weather...we consider it absolutely a success over five weekends."
Earlier this week was spent taking things down, as Winter weather roared across the region. Krysztofiak described the two-day process as the "roughest dismantle" of her career, with the combination of the complexity of parts of the Dandelion combined with the freezing temperatures making it hard work.
Dandelion was shipped out to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it will be part World of Winter 2024, the largest Winter festival in the U.S. Lunar Lamp Posts are also part of the festival and will be set-up on Thursday.
Krysztofiak said there are meetings planned to discuss the next Lights on Stratford, and organizers have their eyes on some big pieces. For now, they will take a "little breath" before getting back to work.
