The lasers used in light shows are only allowed because they're moving; if you looked directly down the beam while it held still your blink reflex would not save your vision. Fortunately, you've got natural liquid cooling: your cornea is bathed in tears and your retina is surrounded by fluid-filled tissues, so there's a safety window of a few milliseconds while the laser pans across your eyeball too fast to cause dangerous temperature rise. If the laser beam slows down - if the encoders/resolvers on the galvanometers register insufficient change in the mirror angles - the controller will shut off the laser.
I don't have sufficient trust in my own professional, methodical, high-quality work using top dollar equipment to open up a machine without safety eyewear and lock out/tag out procedures; I have even less trust in products for the lower-margin, faster-paced entertainment industry. On top of that, it would not surprise me if a camera sensor has slightly less heatsinking compared to human eyeballs...but the fact that the safety margin is so thin that cameras can be damaged makes me not want to go to a light show!