‘Your own private lighting.’ Here’s how to get a sneak peek at the Plaza Lights
For more than 40 years since she was a little girl, Jennifer West’s Thanksgiving tradition in Kansas City has involved standing on top of a parking garage on the Country Club Plaza in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the day before Thanksgiving.
It’s usually cold. She and her family members wrap up in coats and blankets. They always have hot chocolate.
They get there before 2 a.m. Wednesday because that’s when the power company turns on all the Plaza Lights for a test run. The lights are on from 2 to 6 a.m. so workers can make sure every light strand will glow perfectly during the traditional Plaza Lighting Ceremony on Thanksgiving night.
The public can watch the test run. (And see lights be tested on various evenings leading up to Thanksgiving.) Other local families like West’s have turned the day before Thanksgiving into a traditional outing with the kids because watching the lights pop on and glow in the stillness of the early morning — no fireworks, no live music — is special, uncrowded.
“Your own private lighting,” said West, a 47-year-old realtor who lives in Olathe. “I love it.”
New people seem to learn about it every year. A few years ago a KC Redditor advised his online buddies to take their significant others to the test run for a “romantic gesture” or simply “to avoid the crowd ... if you like to party go on Thanksgiving.”
It’s a great TikTok moment, too.
“I have heard that they do a ‘test run’ of the Plaza lights in the middle of the night before the lighting ceremony. Does anyone know if this is true, and when it happens?“ a poster in a Lee’s Summit community Facebook group asked a few days ago.
“Yes, it’s real. We do it every year,” one woman responded. “(Tuesday night) we leave around midnight or 12:30 (a.m., Wednesday) and get on a roof of a business, hang out with hot cocoa and wait, then drive around or walk.”
West said she has watched every test run since she was 5 or 6. Her family would watch the lighting ceremonies on TV but her mother, who was ill, couldn’t handle the crowds.
So one year West’s mom called the electric company, KCP&L at the time, and asked “if they ever had a time when they tested the lights,” she said. “And they said, ‘Yes, Wednesday morning at 2.’
“Mom would get us up, or as we got older we were already awake, and we would take our gas station hot chocolate and go down there and watch them test the lights.”
In those first years they saw almost no one else in the middle of the night. Now there could be anywhere from 25 to 75 other people with them on top of the parking garage near The Cheesecake Factory, which West prefers for its sweeping view of the Plaza.
The lights pop on around 2ish.
No countdown. No live music. No fireworks. Just quiet “oohs.” Maybe a “voila!”
They take photos and selfies and admire the lights before driving around the Plaza and heading home to bed.
“I mean it’s, gosh, the whole family is there doing it together,” she said. “Mom passed away seven years ago, and we keep going down there. I’ve taken my kids since they’ve been born.”
From time to time they’ve attended the official Plaza Lighting Ceremony. The hoopla this year takes place from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday with members of the Kansas City Current turning on the lights around 7:55 p.m.
West’s family will be on top of their parking garage Wednesday.
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