PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN INSIDE THE TREE

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Posted By:  RyanDuffy

Created: 11/28/2008 10:38:56 PM

Updated: 11/29/2008 9:51:51 PM

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Thousands watched the Jacksonville Landing Christmas tree light up with 78,000 lights.

But no one knew about the man inside the tree.

Duane Groet with the company that built the tree, Winterland Inc., spent the night inside the state of the art tree just to make sure everything worked as planned.

"Oh yeah, you're always nervous a little bit because you are trying to excite so many people, you have a lot of time invested in this so there's a lot of nerves," says Groet.

"Am I nervous, yes I'm nervous, it's got to work tonight," says Landing owner Toney Sleiman.

And there is a lot to make sure works with this tree. The tree actually plays its own Christmas music and all the lights are synched to match the music.

The thousands of people packing the Landing might not know all that went into this years tree, but they did know how it turned out.

"It think it looks great, it looks for real, I think it's awesome," says Tony Zajni.

The Landing Tree lights and music show will run every night through the end of December and starts on the hour beginning at 6.

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