STORY:
London Boasts Biggest Millennium Bash

London claims its New Years celebration will be the biggest and best in the world

London certainly has been investing in this party for some time, and it appears to be paying off. 54 television networks from around the world are planning to cover the festivities with 80% of them pledging to include the midnight London display along with the celebration in their own country. So what is the attraction? What will viewers from 54 countries see?

The event has been choreographed second by second. One minute before midnight, all four faces of Big Ben will be lit up by spotlights. This will begin the countdown to midnight, second by second. When Big Ben strikes midnight in the Year 2000 a wall of fire will shoot up the River Thames at more than 620 miles an hour.

Organizers calculated the earth’s rotation and then figured out how long the river of fire should run. It will take 18 seconds for the imaginary line of midnight to travel from Greenwich to the Tower Bridge on the Thames. The river of fire will speed along at the same speed along a three-mile stretch of the river creating the illusion of a continuous 200-foot wall of fire. At the last chime, a 15-minute fireworks show will begin. The firework show is touted as the largest ever in the world, and the show will take place from barges on the river and buildings along the Embankment.

That is just the midnight festivity. The London party will last 24-hours and will include two huge funfairs, one of them right on the doorstep of Buckingham Palace. A "Global Village" will offer all the foods found in London and street theaters will line the river.

There are also plans to turn the traditional New Year’s Eve meeting place of Trafalgar Square into a giant ice rink.

There’s two other major attractions built just for the celebration. The Millennium Ferris Wheel will tower over Big Ben and be filled with visitors taking in the sights from above. The wheel alone was built specially for this celebration and will have it’s own fireworks show at 10 p.m. when it takes its first spin. Down the river is the Millennium Dome. The dome will host 10,000 guests for a spectacular show, which will be repeated every day for the next year.

With so much activity and so many people London police are gearing up for a major safety campaign. While London has never had to deal with crowds of this magnitude before the Assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Ian Johnston, told reporters that he anticipated few problems and that safety is the major consideration.

DATE: 10/19/99

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