The East Peoria Festival of Lights continues its 38th anniversary this season, and this year it includes an iconic float that has been parked in space dock and out of commission for the past three years.
The festival, represented by a wooden soldier named Folepi (which stands for Festival of Lights, East Peoria Illinois), includes many holiday festivities that begin at the end of November and run through early January. A parade, New Year's Eve celebration, pageant, shop and stroll, ornament hunt, and more are all on the schedule.
Of particular interest is Folepi’s Winter Wonderland, a drive-thru light display featuring all of the floats previously seen in the parade. This is where you can now see the USS East Peoria in all of its glory — or as some others call it, The Enterprise.
Kory Brown is the director of tourism for the City of East Peoria, and also serves as the festival’s chairperson. He noted a lot of work needed to be done on the float in order to have it ready for this year’s festival.
“It's a situation where it needed stripped down, the trailer needed to be welded on, and it needed to be redone, essentially, completely from scratch. So, the framework was there, and our volunteers who are the heart and soul of this thing ripped every bulb off that thing, restrung it, and new colors. There's a new controller on it that changes the lights as it goes so it's not set on a program, essentially. So, it got stripped down to the bare steel, and re-bulbed with all 48,000 lights,” explained Brown.
Additionally, Brown said they have been working on moving all of the floats from lawnmowers and old cars to trailers, making them easier to pull and move.
“It's safer, it's cleaner, nothing breaks down, it's easier to move, and this was one of the last ones because it's a big one, and it's one of the heaviest ones," he said. "So, converting it to a trailer and then getting all those new LED bulbs on there was a huge thing, and it took us a number of years and trying to piece it together budget wise with the cost, too, so it's beautiful…everyone needs to go see it."
The reason for the large renovation of the USS East Peoria was due to normal wear and tear, attacks from the elements, dull bulbs, and a desire to rebrand the float, said Brown. With a float weighing in at more than 1,000 pounds and thousands and thousands of bulbs, it was no easy task,
“Just the shape of it and trying to get on top of it to do some of that bulbing is not super easy," said Brown. "So, you can reach the undercarriage of it with a ladder either standing or sitting on the ground. But everything on top, we either need to get a specific extension ladder, we’ll have our bucket truck in there… there's just some moving parts to it.”
A team of three main volunteers oversee the construction and operation of the floats, with roughly 20 others putting in their time and work to make the floats and the festival itself run smoothly. With a mix of full- and part-time workers, unpaid volunteers, and people at City Hall, Brown said a project like this really is a community effort.
“Community involvement is something that keeps this thing alive, and that's why I think it's so important to East Peoria as a whole,” said Brown, adding he hopes those who come see it have a big wow moment.
“It's a one-of-a-kind thing, so I hope it's a wow and a smile and they can see kind of where that came from, and hopefully it's something that brings them joy and they can just see like, man, this thing is super cool. That's what we're hoping for anyway,” he said.
Folepi’s Winter Wonderland is open nightly beginning at 5 p.m. through Jan. 2 at 123 Par 3 Lane in Veteran’s Park in East Peoria off of Springfield Road. For more information on admission, hours, and location, visit the festival’s website.
