A New Local Christmas Attraction

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, Jim and I had an amazing experience last night.
We mentioned earlier in the season about this this new
this new attraction in the area called Christmas Land. This
is drive through Christmas display out in the Waterloo Slash

(00:23):
Valley area western Douglas County, And so we had an
opportunity last night to go out there and meet Travis Freeman,
the owner of Bright Ideas, and Travis is the brain,
the brains behind this operation. It's a seventy acre drive
through Christmas display, Christmas Land, Christmas Land, and it was

(00:46):
awesome and Travis joins us for a few minutes.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Travis, good morning, Hey, good morning, Thank you guys for
having me.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
You bet gady to have you on here. I was
blown away by it. The sheer, the sheer size of it.
It takes uh, well, it's about a two mile route, Travis, Right, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
About two miles long, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
And about what are we about not quite a half
hour to drive through and it's just massive. And my
my first impression was, how in the world did you
make all this happen? And I know this is your
this is obviously the business that you're in with Bright Ideas.

(01:25):
You do the big Tree, the Tree of Lights there
at ninetieth and Dodge the Salvation Army. But I mean
you've got figurines of virtually every description out there, Travis,
everything from traditional Christmas scenes to to birds and animals
and butterflies and bees and farm equipment, and it's incredible,

(01:48):
well done.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Thank you. Well, we try. We tried to put something
out there for everybody, and we've got nine tunnels that
you drive through. The four is fourteen hundred feet long
with over one hundred and seventy butterflies in it. And
the butterflies are just huge, or over eight feet wide.
So everything out there is you know, over oversized and

(02:13):
bigger than life.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, well there's some classic displays. My personal favorites were
the gigantic combine and the cornstalks in Christ and the
Santa Claus doing hook shots from the free throw line
into the basket into the basketball basket. Those are but
the butterflies are really cool. First of all, the question becomes,

(02:39):
do you have your own small modular reactor to run
the power out there? How much juice does that display take?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, surprisingly it doesn't. We've used up everything we have
put it that way, were we But we are going
to be adding power for next year, you know, because
we've already got additions that we want to add and
things want to change, but we are going to need
more power.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, this was the first year for it, and I
was astonished. We were talking afterwards. You and Johnny basically
started in the in the in the fall. I would
have thought it would have taken all summer to build that,
but you didn't start till October, right.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
We didn't start putting up the first light till October,
right around the first week of October. You know, like
any project, we had a couple setbacks that we had
to overcome, which we did and but you know what,
everybody pitched in and worked, you know, NonStop, you know,

(03:43):
fourteen hour days to get that done.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Oh it's very impressive. And you can see it from
Highway to seventy five. It's not hard to get there.
You take that exit where the Loves truck stop is
going north on Megs till you get to two hundred
and fifty second Street, hang a right and it'll take
you right there. And some of the proceeds been to
fit the Salvation Army.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, I want to say arrangement there Travis, what arrangement
do you have with the Salvation Army.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
So I'm the chair of this year of the Tree
of Lights campaign. That's the tree that we put up
at ninety then Dodge, and we're giving a portion back
to the Salvation Army Tree of Lights for every single
car that comes through. So we're really trying to get
as many people out there as we can and raise
as much money as we can for the Tree of
Lights campaign, which all that money locally that goes in

(04:29):
stays here locally.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
You know, Mohammed, you know what I might It might
have been my favorite Rosie. You mentioned a combine, which
I love. But the Snowman, the Leon Redbone Snowman for health. Yeah,
that's good. I love that thing.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
It takes about half an hour once you get in
there because you want to drive slowly so that you
can see everything and take everything in.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
But it's the best half an hour. YEA is a
wonderful ambition of the area. Hey, Travis, thanks so much,
appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Hey, thanks like you guys, and you're going.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
To be open through January fourth, Right, We're.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Open to January fourth, from four thirty to ten thirty.
Every single night awesome.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Travis Freeman from Bright Ideas here