Winter Fest OC 2023
For the 2023 holiday season, PCE helped transform the OC Fairgrounds into a magical winter wonderland for Winter Fest OC. This massive, family-friendly outdoor event took place from late November 2023 to early January 2024, delighting countless families with dazzling lights, thrilling activities, and a healthy serving of good, old fashioned holiday cheer.
So, what exactly is Winter Fest OC? This holiday extravaganza consists of many parts, including an ice skating rink, winter marketplace, theatrical stage shows, holiday lighting, rides, tubing, food, drinks, snow (both real and fake—more on that later), an immersive walkthrough experience, and much, much more. PCE helped fulfill production needs at all of these areas.
Our most obvious contribution? Lighting. Primarily a nighttime event, Winter Fest OC required lights to help guests navigate the space, and while PCE had a hand in illuminating the grounds, we left a bigger mark with numerous outdoor-rated IP theatrical lights. Stationed around the stage, ice rink, tubing hill, and inside most of the event's tents (the main attraction areas), PCE lighting helped generate excitement.
With hundreds of actors, hosts, and entertainers involved in the event, we had our hands full in the audio department. We had to make sure all the performers could be heard, without audio spilling into other areas. This necessitated countless speakers of every kind, as well as an enormous amount of wireless microphones.
PCE rigging and stage techs had the challenge of mounting all of this equipment for maximum effectiveness and minimum obtrusiveness. As a space open to thousands of guests (many of them young children), all equipment and cabling needed to be stowed safely out of the way.
And, of course, you cannot create a winter wonderland without snow! PCE relied on Antari snow machines to create snow for the finale of the main stage show, and also at other key areas throughout the event. As you can see from this video, the snow succeeded in bringing smiles to countless faces.