Went into DC for the big show last night. I am a bit of a fireworks nerd, but there were two spectacular ones that I’d never seen before.
The first was an advancement in the shapes that have been showing uo for the last five years or so (happy faces, geometric, etc) but these were amazing “U” “S” “A”, just the letters, clear as day. Beautifully done.
The second was a waterfall so long, and so extended it felt like I was watching it in slow motion. Truly new and exceptional.
How about you? Seen any advances in the art of the “BOOM!” this year?
Not anything new or unusual, but we moved out further into the country, and this year, from our front yard, we were treated to the sights and sounds of seven different displays in a broad arc over the cornfields across the road from our house. My grandson (12) loved it, as did we all.
Ya know I first saw that in a documentary about fireworks like twenty years ago! A couple of letters and a heart shape forming in the sky. And yet I’ve never seen or heard anything about it since! Must be expensive or something.
People down the road from us (long gravel road with three homes spaced out,we are the last home) stopped to “warn” us that they were going to set off a “professional” firework last night. Cool, whatever. A half hour later there was a ground and window shaking explosion.
I walked over to see what was up. A few other people did the same thing. Neighbor was all embarrassed and didn’t want to talk about it.
OP, you need to get down to Cincinnati for Labor Day weekend sometime and see the Toyota/WEBN fireworks show over the Ohio River just off the downtown area.
The fireworks are put on by the Rozzi family, and they are the best I have ever seen. I used to live in Northern VA and I’ve been to a couple outstanding displays on the Mall with the Washington Monument as a backdrop, but these guys take it to a whole other level.
One really neat feature is that they are able to use the bridges and river barges to launch from and to use as overall set pieces in their displays. The show is also set to rock music so there’s a unique timing element to it as well.
Here’s a link to their website that has some spectacular pictures of their river displays (and also their fireworks they do for the Reds, which are tame by comparison).
The shapes are pretty cool- I’ve seen smiley faces, hearts, stars, saturn (ball with multiple concentric circles), and squares. Last year there were one or two that looked like a cube/box. You could tell they were trying to do some sort of shape at least. But this year, no shapes… I think the budget was not nearly as large as previous years as the whole show was smaller in scale so I am guessing, like you, that the shapes are expensive.
Sadly, Chicago cancelled the huge fireworks show they used to do on the 3rd, and now they just piggyback on the Navy Pier show. Really disappointing. We still watched it, but the best part was watching the reactions of the tiny little girl on her daddys shoulders just in front of us. Her absolute delight at the display was better than the display itself. Sometimes she clapped her hands, but other times, she was so suffused with delight that she didn’t even have time to get them together and her arms just waggled around.
Yes we saw ones that went up and exploded as usual but then a string of the fireworks stayed lit and drifted downwards on glowing parachutes. My description doesn’t do it justice; the whole crowd was exclaiming over them. Never seen anything like it.
Just saw some tonight that I’ve never seen before.
The display was being set off on the edge of a large retention pond. One of them looked like a dud that kind of half went off and sprayed half way out into the pond. But then a few moments later the pond had hundreds of floating flames bobbing about. Looked really cool.
When it happened again later everyone was waiting for the floating flames to appear but this time instead seconds later the bits that fell in the pond leaped up several feet exploding with colors. Never saw that before.
We had a round of those here in Boston. I loved them. They stayed “lit” for a really long time. After a little while they started looking like aliens invading, but that might have been the beer.
Last year or the year before they had some “jellyfish” type of things that bobbed up and down like jellyfish and had tentacles. Very cool.
I saw a few home use ones I hadn’t seen before. One was a fountain that had lava in its name. It spewed forth beautiful blobs of red, yellow, and bluish flame that really looked like they were from a lava lamp. The colors were also really saturated and bright. Those were probably the best and brightest colors I’ve seen in a firework.