We
enjoyed sharing our animated Norton's Winter Wonderland Christmas Display this year with the thousands of visitors to our
street in Burbank, with the television viewing audience (we had great media coverage this
year) and with the virtual community. Please book-mark this web site and remember
to check back periodically during the year for updates. In November, we
will announce the starting date of our holiday display for 2003.
Happy New Year!
produced using NETGUI's In A Flash 3.0,
visit www.netgui.com for details
Happy Holidays!
We're glad that you stopped by to visit the Norton family's holiday web site. Click on the Newspaper
to read the 2002 Daily News article of this display and our neighbor's
If you missed the CBS-2, NBC-4, KCAL-9 news
or the CBS Early Show coverage in 2002, here are MPG movies of their television broadcasts. The
files are around 5 MB in size. Please be
patient when downloading (1-2 min for cable/DSL - much longer for 56K).
Creating elaborate
Christmas displays has been a real fad of our family for decades. We built our first
christmas display in 1970 at our other home in Burbank. We began with
Today, the
Christmas display covers our front
yard and much of the roof, and consumes close to 80 amps!!. Even though this display takes over
a month to create (we began putting
our 2002 holiday display together on
November 1st), the
joy we see in the faces of those who stop by to view and enjoy it makes our
labor efforts and expense worthwhile!
Here
is a link to panorama picture of our 2001 display. Check out the
following pictures
of our
displays for 2001, 2000, 1999 and 1998 - and you will see what we mean by "elaborate." If you have the ability to play MPEG movies
(a high speed connection will help because they are 1.4 MB...),
click
the following link for a
MPEG movie of the yard. Please
visit the page "Recent Additions to the Display."
One of our major additions for 2002 is our new train track (my sincere
thanks to my neighbor, Keith, for his help on several nights in the garage as we
cut the ties and drilled the rails). We began working on the
2002 christmas display on November 2. We achieved our goal to have it operational on Saturday night, December 7.
We have pictures of our 2002 display on this site (it is the
display featured in the snow scene above). You can follow the lengthy process required to put this
display together by clicking on the
date below to its status as of that date. 11/03/2002
* 2002 DISPLAY * * 2001 DISPLAY * * 2000 DISPLAY * * 1999
DISPLAY * *
1998 DISPLAY * What makes this display so unique is the extensive use of animation.
Just like
the train above, our train's wheels
and connecting arms
move. It smokes and has its own sound system that plays the sounds of a
steam whistle and the classic chug-chug of the locomotive. The train signals operate; the merry-go-round
spins while the horses go up and down; the Ferris wheel turns; the
swings fly; the plane's propeller spins and its wings rock as it comes in for a
landing- and the list goes on. Check out the photo gallery
for additional pictures of our display. We have created some MPEG movies and a
streaming video for you to enjoy of our animated attractions!
The link for the streaming video is further down this page. On
the Music page, we have included links to about three dozen great Christmas midi songs for your enjoyment.
To hear them, you will need Windows Media
or a compatible midi player. Matter of fact, if your system is properly configured, you should be hearing
an MP3 file of Winter Wonderland right now as you are reading this.
If you don't, then you likely need to find and download one of these players. Click here
to play a Windows Media Player streaming video of our display for Christmas,
2000. This is a 8 MB movie, so please be patient if you are not using DSL,
Cable or some other form of high bandwidth connection! If you need to
update your player, here is a link
to the latest version at the Microsoft site. Also, you can save these midi files to your hard disk for playing later.
Just right-click on the song you want that is listed on the MUSIC page, and then
click on "save target as" - and select your target folder where you
want to save it on your hard drive. If you have a CR-RW drive, you can
create an audio CD to play them in your audio system. Here is a map
t With
two major displays on our block, parking was always a challenge - particularly on
the weekends. There usually was parking on Clark Street and Verdugo Avenue
- a short walk from the displays. As Christmas Eve approaches, the sidewalks
in our block are typically packed between and in front of the two displays.
In fact, visitors have remarked to us that the crowds remind them of Universal's City
Walk (about 2 miles from our home)!
Remember that if it is raining, or rain is
We get a lot of questions from visitors
about the display. We have added a scrolling message board on the top of the train
station that answers many of the most often-asked questions.
For our on-line visitors, we have added a page on this site that lists a number of those same questions with their answers.
Click this link to our FAQ page to read them.
When you have finished reading the FAQ's, you can either use the back button on your browser to return to this
place on our home page, or click on the links at the top of the FAQ page to return here or to visit other pages on this site.
Just for the Kids!
Santa now has E-mail at the North Pole, and has asked us to help him by providing a place for
you to send him your wish-list!
So, warm up those fingers and send him an E-mail of what you would like him to bring you this Christmas.
Just click below on the picture of Santa reading his E-mail! He still has
room in his sack of toys for that special something you are hoping to get!
Write to him soon! It is now time for you to
pour your favorite drink, grab a snack and sit back to enjoy the
videos, pictures and the music. Better yet, when the display is operating, grab a warm coat, bundle up the family
(or pick up a friend or two) and head on over to Burbank to check out the display
in person. Be sure to bring your camera - the display makes a great backdrop for those
pretty holiday picture postcards!
Note! Because of some virus activity
attempting to use the "nortonswinterwonderland" E-mail address, until
further notice, please send your comments to:
dicknorton@hotmail.com
Dick Norton
left until Christmas!!
11/16/2002
11/17/2002
11/24/2002
12/01/2002-1
12/01/2002-2
June 8, 2003
