RE: New Show in the Royal Palace Theater
To my eye, nighttime magic with a personal, emotional touch is 100% what BGW needs to keep folks in the park and spending later.
Some of the Illuminights stuff was actually pretty good (thinking Garden of Invention acrobats in particular), but didn't seem to entice merch sales as far as I could tell. If Light Balance is doing regular shows in the park, glow merch of all kinds should sell to kids the way Festhaus beer sells to adults.
There was a great convo on here some years ago about the park not having a ton of IP to leverage. That's still the case (and I prefer that to every ride being named Batman, btw). Given that, IMO one of the best ways to maximize the value of BGW's largest permanent performance space is to rent the IP season-to-season as the house act, serving as a midpoint between the known-name acts that come through for a single night and the show identities the park has tried to create from whole cloth in recent years.
Light Balance is an act very visibly by and about people, doing something super cool that isn't overwhelmed by big-set spectacle or ponderous story. It has that Blue Man, Stomp kind of spectacle-spirit that resonates. It may be perfect for the park.
And BGW is at its most beautiful AT NIGHT. It's gorgeous. That has gone wildly underutilized during most recent years. Maybe that can change a bit now. Food and Wine and Bier Fest both run through 9 or 10pm Fridays and 10pm on Saturdays & Sundays. A show which guests may actually go home to tell their friends and neighbors amazing things about could be coming to RPT. Projection mapping was basically invented to be brought to outdoor environments like BGW, and hopefully the Wilkommenhaus will be just the first of many spots chosen to showcase it. Such a promising change overall.
I've been visiting this park since 1986, and I really hope they can find a way to drift back toward the late schedule they once followed. At one point you could stay in the park until at least 10pm every single day from mid-June through end of August. Every single day. That hour was the best time to be there too, when the hot steam of the day blew away in a gentle Virginia breeze and every corner of the park had some small feature to see in a different way. Maybe they'll never get back to midnight closes twice per week, but I'd take any added hour of darkness they can manage...