The Hodgson family give us a preview of their interactive walkthrough light experience in Crossgates which launches on Thursday and supports Martin House Children’s Hospice.
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00:00 Hello, welcome to the Hodgson Family Lights. I'm Dom, this is Heather and you are?
00:05 Scammer!
00:06 We run a seasonal light show for Christmas and Halloween and you can see we're in the midst right now of setting up our Halloween light show.
00:14 Altogether we've got at least 40,000 lights, that's not including the screens if you count them as well, that comes to well over a million.
00:21 New this year we have, well you can see we've got Happy Halloween, so before that we had our bats on the house, we've got Happy Halloween.
00:29 We've got a singing tree, so the spooky tree at the back will sing along to songs that everybody knows.
00:33 We have about four or five brand new songs to add, including someone from Mario.
00:39 Yes.
00:40 What have we got?
00:41 Erm, what?
00:43 Peaches.
00:43 Peaches.
00:44 So, one for the kids there.
00:47 We are launching Thursday the 26th, it's about 6 o'clock and then we're going on, because of half term, till the 2nd of November.
00:55 The times change every night, so check out the Facebook page, but before, half an hour before each session we actually have a sensory session,
01:02 where instead of it being lots of loud music and lots of singing, it's just nice twinkles and everything like that for people who don't really want that.
01:09 The locals love it, they're always popping in, when we've been setting up they've been coming by saying, you know, when's it start, it's looking really good.
01:16 We're getting loads of lovely feedback and I enjoy seeing it go, we're all as much a part of it as you are from the start now.
01:24 This is a British light show, we expect rain, we expect wind, we've had 60, 70 mile an hour winds before.
01:31 Things will get, you know, you're still welcome, the show will still go on.
01:35 This light show is completely free for everybody to come down to.
01:38 We do take donations, we don't force you, but we do raise money for Motton House Children's Hospice.
01:44 We've been raising money for them for years as a family.
01:48 Our goal is to get to 100,000 raised, we're currently on just under 60,000, so, you know.
01:54 This is why we do this thing.
01:55 It's very fun and I just really wish we could carry this on for a long time.
02:03 Scarlett is desperate to do summer lights.
02:05 Yes.
02:06 And I keep telling her it doesn't really work with the light outside, but one year we will do.
02:11 Yes.
02:12 If you were to look at my house right now, you would see half of the Christmas props already waiting to go, including some new ones.
02:18 But yes, as soon as Halloween is done on the 2nd, we take a day off, we leave the house because we can't do that during the season.
02:27 And then sometime around the 4th and the 5th, this will all go down and Christmas will begin.
02:32 Obviously, the number one question we get is, I bet this costs a lot of electric and it's not a cheap hobby to do.
02:37 But we looked at like all the cutbacks and everything like that.
02:40 And bonfires are getting cancelled, fairs are getting cancelled, and light switch on getting cancelled.
02:45 And we just wanted to do our bit to create a bit of joy.
02:48 And, you know, we have families that meet here for family reunions every year.
02:53 This is a scheduled thing for a lot of people now and that really makes us happy.
02:56 It really makes us feel part of the community.
02:58 So this is why we choose to do it.
03:00 And it is genuinely a family hobby.