We headed to the beach around 5:00pm on Saturday as we had heard there could be quite the swarm of people prior to the start of the show (8pm). Needless to say, we underestimated the amount of people that were headed to the beach! The closer the subway train came to our exit, the larger the crowds boarding the train became! Every stop had Korean guards trafficking people onto and off of the subway train. The train became so crowded that the Korean guards could not fit a single tiny Korean onto the train! We were crammed in there like sardines. Once we finally reached our exit and made our way up to street level, we were again shocked at the large crowds of people bee-lining it to the beach! Once we made our way down to the sand, all you could see was people rushing up and down the main drag scrambling to find a seat on the beach, on the sidewalk or on the road! It was madness! Luckily, some of our goods friends had extra room down on the beach for us, so we headed down there with them!
The view of the bridge was spectacular that night as it was fully light with spotlights and other coloured lights. Now, if this was Windsor, we would all be sitting down by the Detroit river, freezing our butts off, waiting for the show to start. Well, in Korea, they know how to do things right! They had set up entertainment screens in four different locales across the water infront of the bridge. This allowed for them to broadcast live music events for the eagerly waiting spectators. The entertainment was amazing and it definitely helped ease our patience as we waited for the fireworks display!
The fireworks eventually started and the theme for this show was "Sail around the world". Every ten minutes or so the giant broadcast screens would light up with a short introduction about a different global region - Asia, "America" (bah, what is "America" anyway??) Europe, etc. Each fireworks presentation was choreographed with music, which was appropriate for each region (and somewhat stereotypical haha). The combination of music, choreographed fireworks and spotlight movement definitely created a more dynamic and captivating show than any fireworks display back home. They didn't really focus on the loud "bang" effect of a fireworks display, instead, it was more creative and dramatic. There were quite a few different effects that we had never seen before! For example, they had fireworks that would shoot into the water, float around for a few minutes, and then burst into the air again! They also had flying fluorescent birds that would zoom throughout the sky and randomly light on fire! The third, and I think the most creative part of the show, was when fireworks started to stream out from underneath the bridge, creating a raining effect.
The finale of the show consisted of the biggest fireworks I have ever seen! It was spectacular!
