Please post your reviews of the American display here (after the show, of course)!

Thunderstorms (a few potentially isolated severe cells) and convective showers will continue to progess East/ESE towards S. Quebec this evening into the overnight hours. Some storms may be also visible in the distance to the West later this evening. Chance of precipitation late this evening is 40%, and 60% by midnight and onwards. More details in the weather thread.

Edit: Paul, could you please correct the spelling for "reviews" in the topic heading? Not too sure how that happened! Thanks!

Trav.

What an awesome and (literally) powerful display by Atlas! We had seen a great range of pyrotechnics and patterned shells (especially those butterflies), high-quality products, excellent color richness, and some very enjoyable choreography, largely with respect to the low-level sequences of comets and mines, leading to many gasps of enthusiasm throughout the show! The finale was also deafening, especially with that final volley of salutes, but I found that the finale itself was too broken up and not adequate enough in longevity! Still, lots to like about this display!

Apart from the periods of convective showers, we should consider ourselves incredibly lucky with the weather in the metropolitan area, as severe thunderstorms impacted much the West Island and heading West/SW between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. When driving back to the West Island after the show, we quickly wtnessed large puddles of water beginning to emerge on the expressways and boulevards, and it soon became apparent that there were localized power outages. I was told that the downpours of rain were quite torrential and were accompanied by gusty winds and intense lightning.

I'll have more details later on! Many thanks, Paul, for correcting the thread heading!

Trav.

Here is some footage from the American display that I had wanted to share (taken from Notre-Dame/de Lorimier)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVhzgfPpUxU

Trav.

That was a powerful demonstration from the American team, with a surprising cooperative weather. As Trav wrote, dark clouds were in the area before the show and I saw spectacular lightnings from the grandstands, but we received only a couple drops, here and there. Afraid by these clouds, around 9:20pm, I claimed to Paul and Mylène: "I need a Trav's update!" Paul had looked at the radar before his arrival and was confident. He was right. Unfortunately, we experienced a rain of stuff from the fireworks, as the wind brought the smoke toward the grandstands.

For its 3rd show in Montreal, Atlas had a lot of fireworks pieces in store. That was a massive, powerful display, the force being sometimes augmented by the proximity of the effects launched from the fifth ramp. The orchestral soundtrack from Fantasia was a great background for this sort of extravaganza. The choregraphy was made of a variety of shells, mines and one-shot, leading the number of cues to a new height. We enjoyed countless fast sequences of mines and other devices fired with different angles, or successively from one side of the firing area to the others. These sequences were so rapid that it was fascinating to watch the base of the setup, especially on ramps 3, 4 and 5, to see (and to hear) the fireworks being shooted from the mortars. The arch on the fourth ramp behave like a giant cake, shooting hundreds of stars at an incredible pace. We had a 32-minute perfectly note-synchronized show from the beginning to the end.

The 90 seconds introduction narrative was a bit anti-climactic, nevertheless a line of flares appeared, so it was not a black sky. We saw some interesting and rare patterns (the butterfly-shape shells; others with five rings connecting in the centre thus making a three-dimensional effect...), but I felt the quality of the fireworks used was less than what we experienced in the Japanese, Portuguese and Italian displays. It is a shame that no more nautical effects were used, only a couple of them dissolved in the finale. (Very few nautical effects were displayed this year.) More important, I found the show could have more rhythmic and firing patterns diversity: the first third of the show was highly enjoyable, but the remaining was more or less the same things. My viewpoint may not be representative of the general public, as many people likely enjoy more than me this sort of "big" shows.

While I emphasize many aspects which were not as strong as in other displays, it was nonetheless a very good show and we are lucky to enjoy them. Over the last few days, I discussed with some foreign colleagues currently in Montreal and who attended the latest shows, and were going again for the American one. They are fascinated and can't believe how great these fireworks displays are.

As the competition comes to a close, I now have to think about my personal choice and my prediction. Whether my first and second choices are clear, it is less obvious for the third one, and even less to make a prediction. In opposition to previous years, I feel more diversity in opinions of people who have attended the whole season or, at least, a large number of displays.

Fred

A very enjoyable display was given by the American company. Great synchronization between the one shots and roman candles, and the music. The entire display had great pace to it and the transitions were well on. There was a lot of great use of effects including the mines and one shots in the first few segments and the power of the large caliber shells lifting into the sky made the ground tremble. The choice of music itself was fascinating and had quite a variance compared to some other displays, certain songs that most people haven't heard when combined with pyrotechnic product. While most of the display went well, several parts of the display had let's say... unfortunate events, including the ghost effect shells that were obscured by other large shells and were rapidly sequenced along with lower shells, which could possibly mean not many people noticed the effect of the shell. The butterfly shaped shells were very noticeable and really made the segment come to life with all sorts of colours. The best part of the display, had to have been the Night on Bare Mountain. The amount of synchronization I saw in that segment, boggles my mind. It had great amounts of crescendos and went well with the use of product. An hour before the display, I believe Stephen Pelkey had walked by me with his family, I wished him and his team good luck (I work at the park). With the regard of wind direction, the team were lucky to have not much rain and great approval from the audience. The display overall was not the best I've seen this season, but sure did have great variety of effects and music and I believe this team deserves a Jupiter. The use of ramp 5 was superb as well, as it got close to the audience and the amount of effects that were added to the second to last song, made many people gasp is surprise. The finale itself, wasn't as "grand" as the typical American firms would conclude with in the competition (neither was Zambelli's), yet did have some power to it. Still nothing close to team Vaccalluzzo, but was far more enjoyable than France's. As I mentioned, the wind, was not the pièce de résistance for the display. Small embers and debris made some people including myself, as blind as bats, at multiple times which made it rather unfortunate for the people on the left of the viewing point. I unfortunately did not bring my video camera, as I was working. One thing I had too much anticipation about, were the studata mines, as very few were used in the display. All that said, Atlas presented an enjoyable display and was the first display I've seen Atlas present at the competition. The amount of precision and timing throughout the entire display, made a unique entry for myself and for those who have follow this years competition. Great work and a tremendous applause to all the firms who participated this season, and good luck to all 8 of them.

My final vote will be posted on the Jupiter Predictions thread.

Pat

Impressive show from Atlas! The one shot sequences were definitely the main highlight of the show. The different firing patterns were very good but the final runs in the middle could have been spread out for a more impressive effect. The low level fireworks choreography was close to perfection. That's probably as close as anyone can get from what RICASA did in 2005 with all their one shots and roman candles. The shells were a bit of a problem for this show, the quality of the shells were very good but as mentioned, not as good as Japan and Italy's shells. It's really hard to compete with those two when it comes to the quality of the effects. More than the quality, i think that the variety of effects were somewhat limited in this show. I could remember a lot of go getters and tourbillion shells. As I have mentioned to Paul while on chat last night, I'm worried about the shell count as compared to the one shots. Turns out this is the case in this show, i felt that there wasn't enough shells. The soundtrack was pretty basic but one criticism was that there wasn't really any high parts to it, they all stayed at the same intensity. In contrast to what have been said, the show did not have any big and intense parts other than the finale which makes the show look/feel less powerful than it really was. That said, this show definitely deserves a spot on the top 3 this year!

Vander

Here is the video for the U.S.A. - July 31: http://www.burchcom.com/2012/index.html

If you want to download and save a copy to your hard drive, right click on this URL and select "save target as":
http://www.burchcom.com/2012/usa2012_qtp.mp4

There was a lot of smoke with this show.

Hi guys,

I apologize to those viewers at La Ronde last night with respect to wind direction. Models had indicated that the winds, over a large scale, would be coming out from the SSE at slightly breezy speeds, and thus would push the smoke adequately to the right of the audience. This was, of course, not the case, as winds became Westerly to WNW near 10:00 p.m and through the duration of the display. However, as pointed out at the end of my last posting in the weather thread, wind patterns (speed and direction) often can locally become distorted if thunderstorms occur in or relatively close to a given area. As a result, even though last night's thunderstorms did not "directly" affect the metropolitan area, they still very likely had some local influence in terms of disrupting the local air flow. Unfortunately, these distortions resulted in unfavorable wind direction and speed before, during, and after the display.

There was a lot of smoke with this show.

Our exact same thoughts on Notre-Dame street during the Italian display!

Trav.

It was remarkable - throughout the presentation period before the display, the winds were directly away from the audience (as shown by the La Ronde flag). A few seconds before 10pm, the flag did a 180 and the winds came directly at the audience for the duration of the display. At 10:33, the winds stopped completely!

Paul.

Given the specific timeframe of the winds direction, I understand that it was a part of the show. It fits with the Disney theme, as the theme park leader stresses the importance of making engaging and immersive experiences. For sure, the American show was physically the most immersive one this year!

Fred

throughout the presentation period before the display, the winds were directly away from the audience (as shown by the La Ronde flag).

I had also observed this with the smoke associated with the first two salutes fired between 9:30 and 9:38 p.m. (as well as with someone occasionally exhaling smoke from a cigarette not far from where we were positioned!).

At 10:33, the winds stopped completely!

Indeed, and recall that the winds were quite breezy (sometimes gusty) from the South to SSW from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.!

These radical changes in wind pattern exemplifies the influence of thunderstorms, and we had similarly observed this phenomenon during Hong Kong/China's display in 2009, though the storms were close/overhead at that time. Unfortunately, it is beyond computer models' ability to predict and/or take into account these timely, local variations in wind tendency, simply because of the often capricious nature of thunderstorms.

It fits with the Disney theme, as the theme park leader stresses the importance of making engaging and immersive experiences.

I had also briefly expressed this in a similar fashion to Simon on Facebook before the display, as I realized the theme could be fitting with the risk of thunderstorms yesterday evening. Of course, it felt even more appropriate with lightning occurrences illuminating the SW and Western horizons!

Trav.

My review of the US show: http://montreal-fireworks.com/ReportBlog/?p=679

It was good, but it wasn't my personal favourite. I'll complete the Jupiter predictions section later!

Paul

I didn't write a personal review here, as everything that I had wanted to cover concerning the American display was stated in the 2012 Jupiter predictions thread.

Trav.