I have loved the fountains since I was a child, back in the 50’s, when I went there with my mother. I just saw the new fountains in September, 2019, and it was spectacular. Yes, it did make me cry. The music is much better and clearer with a state of the art surround sound system. Everything was so amazing that it really justified the taking out of the old fountains for the new design. Don’t worry, they were not destroyed, they were painstakingly taken apart, saved, the new was added, and the old was integrated with the new to be a seamless, majestic water/fire/light feature six times larger than the original.
Wow, this is incredible technology and is visionary! Bravo Longwood, fantastic! Can't wait to experience this! Thank you for creating this for all of us to delight in!
I was very sad to see one of America's oldest performing fountains torn up, and yet I'm ecstatic about what's being done! This looks unbelievable. The fire is wonderful, in the way it only burns at the top. The moving nozzles are elegant, while these effects can often be too glitzy. The rotating nozzles were a mainstay of Otto Przystawik's famous "Dancing Waters," and are still used in his grandson Michael's "Waltzing Waters" today, and here they look elegant and refined, like dancers. Regarding the basket-weave nozzles in all the pods: if the fountain folks at Longwood don't know this, the earliest illuminated performing fountains, F. W. Darlington's "Electric Fountains," starting around the 1890s and lit with carbon arc lights, all relied on these, which Darlington called "beehives" and "sheaves of wheat," and they're still spectacular today. They catch the lights, they sparkle... and if they're started at low pressure and then suddenly increased, they'll begin looking like ordinary inside-drop spray rings, before suddenly blossoming outward, likely surprising many viewers! From someone whose hobby is the history and design of show fountains, and who knows who in the business today is doing what, how it looks, and how maintenance-intensive it is-- bravo. Longwood is creating a world-class show, and anyone else who's a fan of performing water is going to be coming to see this. I know I will be. I do hope the previous control system (which I'm told the in-house choreographer always programmed blind in raw code) and some of the incandescent lights and their special lenses, reflectors and lamps will be preserved somewhere. Just as Longwood has the old Italian Garden switchboard, so too will they be glad to have this outmoded tech around someday to show how it used to be done!
