mackmickles:
why can't I just use programmable LED strip lights that are already wired together and have a microcontroller at each node?
All of these options are technically straight forward and you could implement any of them. But, aren't you concerned about the time and money needed to get it working and the reliability/durability afterwards? If you're happy chucking thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours at something that only has to work for a few days, pick just about any of these solutions.
If time, money and durability are important to you, though, the timer-based delay line approach strikes me as the cheapest and simplest solution, but still going to take a huge (in my terms) amount of time and money.