London 2012 Ceremony: Getting In & FlashMob

There are few times in one’s life when you feel truly that things are coming together.

Certainly over the last couple of months, I have felt a little battered and bruised by studies, exam pressures and the realities of freelancing, so when a friend who works in the sporting media casually asked me if I wanted to go halves on a ticketing bundle, including restrictive view tickets of the Opening Ceremony, I wasn’t going to argue.

Except our jokes about “we’ll be sat in front of a tree” came true.

We were sat.  In front of.  THE TREE!

Now really, who puts a tree in the middle of stadium!

We also noticed, sadly, that chunks of seats were not taken up – the Category B tickets in front of us had a face value of £995.  Tickets right by where the athletes came out, also empty.

But more on that later!

Getting in

After grabbing a bite to eat at the Stratford Centre, we made our way back to the park, and the scene was just amazing, people streaming up the steps and for the most part, security officials (including police drafted in) were pretty friendly.  There are always one or two that, once they done a luminescent jacket and an official lanyard) seem to think that they are holier than thou… but the Purple-clad volunteers in particular were amazingly cheerful and helpful.

The Olympic Park is HUGE.  When you first come over the bridge and see the media centre, the stadium, the Orbit structure and the aquatic centre – you cannot help but be impressed.  We likened it to a giant theme park – for sporting nuts.  We just strolled around like grinning idiots for about an hour just soaking up the atmosphere.

A tree.  A TREE!?

We had joked about our seats maybe overlooking the park instead of the stadium… so you can imagine our stunned-mullet-ness when we got to the top of the steps and could see the branches of a big tree.

And yes, indeed our restricted view was… seats behind a tree.  A TREE!!!!

Seriously who puts a socking great tree in the middle of a stadium?!

I was just happy to be in there and was determined to make the most of the occasion, but understandably peoples’ reactions were one of dismay.

We also noticed as the evening started to wear on before the beginning of the ceremony, that the more expensive seats directly below us were empty.  I asked one of the stewards if I might run down and take some photos once things got started, which was OK if I ran straight back, but a definite NO to sitting there if the seats weren’t taken.

This made no sense, as obviously a LOT was going to happen in front of that tree, and a wide stretch of empty seats would be obvious.

So there we sat, treated to random acts of village life, seen on the TVs overhead. 

For some reason some “clouds” and their wranglers brought about a roar and a “London” wave.  The stadium was nowhere near full at this time, but the sound was unreal. 

We had a few adverts pop up on the TV, and the clouds came and went, in and out of the stadium!

I came back from a comfort break to find the stadium going mental over milk maids running on with cows and goats.

From what I could gather over Twitter, there were all kinds of moving Olympic montages we were missing, as opposed to our ads, clouds and livestock – very different.

On screen we had images of ducks.  In the garden bit.  Probably in front of the damned tree.

Horses were ploughing a fake field, farmers and wifes were having a chin-wag.

We had Curtis Walker as MC warming up the audience and we were being given queues of what to do with our strobe lights attached to chairs.

At 20:12 the strobes started to count down The Red Arrows fly past over head, but annoyingly not over the stadium where we can see.

The pre-entertainment carries on with a turn by a folk singer.

Flash Mob escape tree

With about half an hour to go, suddenly everyone around us started to make a move for the seats below.  We noticed that initially people went to the left of the tree, and suddenly our group and people immediately around us headed to the right.

Initially the stewards were just struck immobile as they watched a wave of people in the seats above just flood down to the next seats.

One of them tried to tell us that the view was restricted here, and was shown a “before and after” photo, to which he had no answer.

To be fair to them, they let it go.  The prospect of trying to move over a hundred people back up to where they came from would have been pretty daunting, and it was obvious that the space behind the tree looking empty would have been incongruous.

So they went with it – and good for them for doing so.

Up until that point I had been genuinely excited to be there, despite being arborealy challenged – but on seeing what was behind the tree – that was the point at which I started to feel quite emotional about the whole experience!

Flash mob rules – next stop – The Royal Box! (Just kidding!)