Santa Monica Pier

The Pacific Wheel Will Shine for the Year of the Ox and Valentine's Day

Enjoy the Santa Monica attraction's vivacious array of patterns and lights over three festive nights.

Pacific Park

What to Know

  • Lunar New Year will be celebrated on Feb. 12 from sunset to midnight
  • Valentine's Day will glow on Feb. 13 and 14 from sunset to midnight
  • Free to see on the Pacific Wheel Live Cam

All annual occasions seem possess at least a little oomph, but there are those winter-brightening bashes that truly seem to have far more sparkle than any other celebration found on the calendar.

Look to the Lunar New Year, with its lion dances, delicious traditional foods, and the pop-pop-pop of firecrackers.

We won't be greeting The Year of the Ox in the wonderful and time-honored ways we might have hoped to, but the momentous 2021 moment will be honored, with oodles of shimmer and glimmer, at the Pacific Wheel on Santa Monica Pier.

The famous solar-powered Ferris wheel isn't open for riders, but at-home revelers can watch the attraction's live cam on Friday evening, Feb. 12 to see a luminous line-up of Lunar New Year imagery, including, hooray, the ox.

The wheel stands at over 90 feet, so the auspicious icons you want to see, the symbols that signify lunar luck, joy, and hope-forwardness, will be on glittery display from sunset through to midnight.

And on Feb. 13 and 14 at the Pacific Park icon?

Hearts'll rule as the Pacific Wheel salutes the Day o' Love.

Like the Lunar New Year display, the Valentine's presentation is a free show, one that will add nighttime dazzle from sundown to sunset, and, you bet, you can see it all on the live cam.

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