Opening Ceremony (full dress rehearsal)
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
I’ve just got back from going to see the final full dress rehearsal of the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics, and it was pretty amazing stuff! This blog post is going to be pretty boring as I was a good boy and didn’t take (m)any pictures and I can’t actually tell you what happened, but I’ll do my best to entertain you for a moment or two with other stuff that was going on.
Pretty much all the ticket holders for this event were volunteers, or family of volunteers, so there were lots of blue jackets around, and I was amused when the Mayor of Vancouver came on before the event started and thanked the volunteers for making it possible. Then the Premier came on and said his bit, again thanking the volunteers. That was pretty cool. Then the Prime Minister came on and said his thank you’s too, and that was amazing! He’s actually a good public speaker, which is nice.
Anyhoo, lots of good stuff happening during the show… I was lucky enough to get seats about 10 rows back from the stage so had a really close up view of the famous folks that were on stage, got snowed on by both fake snow (real frozen ice stuff, none of this feathery stuff) and paper maple leaves. I kept one of them.
One of the funniest things was that they did the entrance of the athletes, but of course the athletes had prior engagements, so they pulled in stand-ins… off the street! Folks in jeans and Canada branded sweaters mooching in and then waving wildly following the Elbonian flag was pretty funny, and so was the massive crowd representing Team Canada when the majority of the teams got about 3 or 4 people. Of course Team Canada got the biggest cheer, but Australia was up there! I think we ranked about 3 or 4 on the cheering scale.
Getting in wasn’t too much of a trial either. Full metal detectors and waiting in line for about half an hour, but you kind of expect that these days. The security folks said they were looking forward to another 14 days of it… not.
Oh, and they must have held a few things back for tomorrow too, as we didn’t get to see the lighting of the Olympic Flame… be interesting to see how they go about lighting the BBQ!
Also, don’t forget to look out for us in the news (if you’re not in Vancouver) tomorrow night, as the Aussies are planning a bit of a fun cheer squad for the Australian Team 
