On Wednesday I just so happened to have a trip down to London planned to see A Christmas Carol. This had been planned since the end of September and I had no idea that it was going to be on the same day as the European Premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I have never been the biggest Star Wars fan (although that has started to change). But I was still very excited about it going on in Leicester Square at the same time I was going to be down. Luckily I was tweeting about it on the train heading into London and someone told me wristbands were being handed out inside the Odeon until 12pm. That was rather good timing as my train got in about 11am.
As you can see in the above photos the construction and transformation of Leicester Square was taking up a lot of the day, it was pretty crazy with all of the big screens and huge red carpet stretching out around the whole place. I went straight into the Odeon well kinda, we had to wait outside for a few minutes first I say we I got talking to two American girls who didn’t know much about it but were very excited as well.
The good news . . . I got a wristband.
The bad news . . . You had to start queuing from 1pm and they closed the pens at 4pm. I was seeing the matinee of A Christmas Carol starting at 2:30pm and therefore finishing around 5pm. So it just didn’t work out at all. To torture myself even more I went back across to see if there was any chance of actually getting myself into the pen. No. I guess my fortunate planning backfired eventually and it was very disappointing, especially as I did not enjoy the play at all. It was probably a once in a lifetime thing but considering how much I paid for the ticket for A Christmas Carol not really something I could have just forgotten about either.
It was totally crazy heading back across to the square as with it all being blocked off people were just standing well pretty much in any space possible. So this is the second time I have now ended up in London as a Premiere is going on right next to me and haven’t been able to see anything, the first was Carol as part of the London Film Festival. The atmosphere for this one was pretty cool though, maybe next time I should plan properly to actually be able to get a place near the front and see everything as a Premiere is going on? One day I might just try it properly!
I did bump into Darth Maul though . . .
