After being lucky enough to attend both the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics and having an amazing time I was addicted to the whole vibe. From the volunteers enthusiasm to just walking into the park the whole thing was overwhelming. I’ve already made enquiries about going to the Rio games in 2016.
When I was also able to get tickets for opening ceremony for the Paralympics I was really excited.
Initially, walking towards the Olympic Stadium for the ceremony didn’t have the same feel. Maybe it was the damp weather or the lack of foreign tourists adding to the atmosphere, but of course the support was great from the British public .
The ceremony seemed to get off to a very slow start, and had more of a high brow feel to it. I don’t think it was appealing to the masses. I like a good old sing a long but apart from the national anthem I didn’t know the words to any of them, ( ashamedly I struggled with the second verse of that too).
Lighting and the effects were fantastic, but I felt like I’d seen it all before at the previous ceremonies. Once you have seen something great you are looking for something better each time and it just didn’t live up to that for me.
I was also upset because I didn’t get an apple to bite into as they’d all gone by the time I arrived 10 minutes before the start. That part was a bit over every body’s head, I understand now it was about Isaac Newton but it went over my head too at the time.
The whole thing felt very serious. When Stephen Hawking appeared I learnt something else too - I had always thought he was an American because of the accent on his automatic voice but of course he’s British. I didn’t know who Miranda was either and if you aren’t into Shakespeare I don’t think any of the athletes from other countries would have known what was going on either. I know they said the same about the Olympics but whatever nationality I’m sure you would have enjoyed that.
I wasn’t very patient while the athletes came in so I went to get some food and drinks but kept overhearing a lot of people with the same opinion. You feel like you’re criticizing athletes but that’s not the case at all I think what they do is fantastic. When Sir Philip Craven gave his speech after Seb Coe he went on too long too.
What I did love were the people on the 10 ft bendy poles and the acrobats with umbrellas.
When the GB athletes came out to ‘we could be heroes’, that’s when I did get a lump in my throat and felt like the whole ceremony should have had that same feeling.
David Bowie’s music was also featured in the in the Olympics closing ceremony - it would have been nice to see him there in the flesh. The same goes for Rihanna, I expected her to pop out of the middle performing her hit Umbrella rather than just the track playing. It had a distinct lack of wow moments.
I’ll be interested to see whether the closing ceremony is sold out if the public watched the opening and had the same feelings as me. It’s very hard to live up to the Olympics opening ceremony with all the money and effort that went into that. You always want it to be better than what you’ve seen before. The only thing that came near to it for me was the Rio Carnival so I’m hoping 2016 will do it for me.