The size of crowds thronging Queenstown Gardens for the resort's annual light festival have gobsmacked organisers.
Luma Southern Light Project is on track to host almost 35,000 people over four nights during Queen's Birthday weekend, up from just over 10,000 people last year.
"We're stoked,'' Luma Festival Trust chairman Duncan Forsyth said yesterday. "It's just insane.''
Crowds were wowed by 28 installations in and near the gardens - which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
Light sculptures ranged from lit "flowers'' designed by local school children to 10m-high translucent posts people could walk between, as well as fairies dancing under a mirror ball in a secluded pocket of forest.
This year's installations included the 4m-high Mountain of Light, which featured at the Vivid Sydney light festival.
Staging the festival in Queenstown should cost several hundred thousand dollars, but about two-thirds of the costs, such as scaffolding and sculpture rigging, were donated, Mr Forsyth said.
The event attracted about 45 volunteers.
As for the artists: "We're barely paying them,'' he said.
"If we didn't have the community help and everybody chipping in, it wouldn't happen.''
The organisers' aim was to stage a community-driven festival of international standard.
Luma was a way for the town's arts community to share its culture with a wider audience, Mr Forsyth said.
Only last week, Luma was named by travel website Escape.com.au as one of 10 "amazing light shows around the world''.
There was room for improvement, Mr Forsyth said.
"From an artistic point of view you can be a lot cleverer and be a lot simpler,'' he said.
"I think we want to immerse people a little bit more.''
Next year organisers hoped to flesh out more "pathways'' to sculptures in the gardens and make it easier for people to walk around.
Another idea was to hit up Queenstown's larger businesses - in the hope of lighting up some top tourist rides, such as Real Journeys' steamship, TSS Earnslaw, or Skyline Queenstown's gondola, Mr Forsyth said.
"Next year will be completely different but completely the same.''
