Milwaukee Holiday Lights Festival Amazes With Drones

Thank goodness for high-definition cameras and those who use them to share really cool things with everyone else.

With the pandemic raging and mitigation efforts being tightened up across the country, many of us who really look forward to getting out and seeing the holiday lights and enjoying the festivals that go along with those lights are choosing to stay home and out of public spots.

You miss a lot of interesting things during a lockdown, as I'm sure you're more than aware.

Luckily, the cameras were rolling in Milwaukee the other night as the city kicked off its annual Milwaukee Holiday Lights Festival.

Welcoming in the holiday season has gone a bit more high-tech since the days of having Santa roll up, greet the crowd, and flip the switch to light the holiday tree. Now, if you want to blow away the attending audience (and those who'll watch the video later), you bring in a couple of hundred drones to really put on a show:

If you recall back to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, the world was buzzing over the drone show that organizers used to highlight the opening ceremonies. A world-record setter at the time, a total of 1,218 drones outfitted with LED lights were used to paint "colorful illustrations in the sky," setting a new Guinness World Record on the number of drones flown at the same time.

Milwaukee's festival only had 200 drones, but I think the effect was spectacular enough that a drone show will have to become a standard feature as the event moves forward.

Maybe our own Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (RACVB) will want to incorporate drones into a future "Stroll on State."

Here's a behind the scenes look at how it was pulled off: