The recently completed ‘Gift of Lights' at Dover Motor Speedway’ saw thousands of visitors come through the Woodlands for the holidays.
The drive-thru light show ran from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day with visitors seeing more than 60 scenes and 3 million lights.
It was held on one of the largest camping lots at the Woodlands of Dover Motor Speedway, and it was produced by Winterland, Inc., a holiday services firm from Indiana.
The event also raised thousands of dollars for children’s charities during the Speedway S’mores events over two weekends which featured fire pits for s’mores roasting, a petting zoo, visits from Santa, local vendors and holiday music.
"We were actually able to gather more than 10,000 lbs of canned goods for the Food Bank of Delaware during one of our nights there. That's just an overwhelming response from the community. We got a lot of messages about how much people enjoyed the event, and how they went multiple times and brought different family members each time with them. So we think everything went very well for the inaugural Gift of Lights at Dover Motor Speedway," said Michael Lewis, manager of communications for Dover Motor Speedway.
The inaugural version of ‘Gift of Lights’ is another event at the speedway grounds as it continues to develop more events outside of the race weekend in the spring.
Lewis says turnout during that was great - drawing tens of thousands
"Some nights we had overwhelming numbers of vehicles coming through the Woodlands of Dover Motor Speedway, and they were able to see more than 3 million lights on display and cover a pathway of 1.5 miles around one of our biggest camping lots,” said Lewis. “And it's really the start of what we think is a new tradition here for Dover and Kent County for families to enjoy during the holiday season."
The event will be back for the 2023 holiday season, and Lewis notes updates for the next ‘Gift of Lights’ and every event at Dover Motor Speedway are available at their website.
