Hi therreeeee!
On Wednesday 19th June me & the sister went to see Robbie Williams at Manchester Etihad Stadium!
Gem has been totally obsessed with Robbie since his Take That days. She has seen him in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London & Manchester a few times (+Soccer Aid/Take That concerts etc). If she buys his song, she has to buy it again just so it goes up in the charts *sighs* hehe.
So when he announced he was going on tour (for the first time since 2006 solo) we obviously had to go.
It's quite weird because if someone you live with has this mental obsession with someone, you can quickly get sick of it or go off that person yourself, but it's actually not made me dislike him or his music. He's such a great entertainer & his songs, I actually like them all - & how many singers can you say that about?! As much as you might like a singer, you can quickly get sick of hearing their songs, a lot of them might sound the same or a lot of albums are half 'filler tracks'!
When we went to London to see him in November (post of our trip HERE) it was the first time I had seen him live which is quite weird to think about because I wondered why I hadn't been to see him with Gemma before now..but my auntie shares her same obsession so in the past, she'd go with her. The concert in London wasn't what I expected because I didn't realise it was only a 3 night concert thing so I was quietly disappointed as I was expecting a proper 'show'. (Obviously my fault for not realising the difference 8 )). I still enjoyed the show and definitely enjoyed our trip to London for the first time :D
However, when Gem asked me if I wanted to go & see him again, I definitely did, hoping this stadium tour would meet my expectations....and I am soooo pleased to say that it really did :D
The stage/props, Robbie himself was genuinely glad to be there with his fans completely enjoying himself, let's not forget Olly Murs as Robbies support act, the atmosphere, the DJ who got the crowd excited before they came on etc etc.
I had always wanted to go to Manchester too so we were totally looking forward to the day trip!
Gem drove there
*Road trip - road trip - road trip!*
(Well done Gem! First big journey since driving).
We had a good journey, apart from hitting a little traffic nearer Manchester all up hill and me getting a flaming migraine! (Typical, but expected :P). We parked at Piccadilly station & caught the tram to Market Street (Not realising that it was really just around the corner :))
It was sooooo busy & veryyyy hot! We went to Debenhams to get some lunch (chips, peas & gravy obvs) and by this time after having a short wonder around Primark & Debenhams, we headed to the stadium for the gates opening at 5pm.
(Warning - Rant (mainly staff))
Skip this bit if you don't like moaning :P
Well...I can't really go in to one on here because I'll go on forever but the majority of staff at the stadium (which was really easy to get to by the way in case you have a trip planned and don't quite know what you're doing either) that we came across, were SO rude! Honestly, we get that they have a job to do but they told us to get in 3 queues we didn't need to be in!
We were heading straight round to our gate as it said on our email etc. and then it all soon turned in to a 'who could wind us up the most' contest!
One man told us we needed to be in the 'general admissions' queue even though I said we were seated in block V, it's like he didn't want to listen! We queued in that queue for 40 minutes in the boiling heat (one girl fainted in front of us bless her!) but when we got to the gate - "You don't want this queue ... rar rar rar" well - after 3 bag searches and about 10 rude people...yep - we had to go to gate V, where we were heading all along!!
The only sentences that the staff seemed to know were ''You don't need this queue'' and "keep moving, keep moving". We were like ^: < "There's only a certain point that we can move up...if they move, of course were going to move!" They were obviously oblivious to the fact that it's impossible to walk through humans! But thankfully, after our blood pressure was going off the scale (it was a long day), the staff at gate V were by far the friendliest and smiliest we had spoken to. It might sound silly but it was the tone of their comments that made us want to punch them! (sorry :))
We were in the mood to turn around and walk off "forget the concert"! It just wasn't the mood you wanted to be put in before a massive concert that you had been looking forward to.
A tip - if you think you know where you are going - don't listen to the staff lol.
Also - we caught the tram back to the car. We bought a return ticket earlier on thinking it would be quicker...no no - an hour after the show had finished we were queueing what seemed like a further hour just to get to the tram! Bad organisation. We read they had put extra trams on the lines expecting it to be busy... no no, the trams still came around every 12 - 15 minutes. The lines are all split up to merge again oOoo nightmare! Yes, we are claustrophobic.
(Rant - over)
So back to the good bit :D
If I ever justify the price of a Macbook Pro, I would love to put a video together of some clips I took because it was so good!
Robbie came out on a zip wire & opened the show with 'Let me Entertain you'. The floor was bouncing so much from the crowd clapping & it was hard to keep my camera still!
There were about 6 different giant 'Robbie Heads' full of balloons, streamer stuff, fire & one platform that raised up.
Olly sang 'Kids' with him & Olly as a support act - he was fab! He can really sing live & he deffo got the crowd hyped up. Olly was on for an hour which seemed quite shocking - he has brought more songs out than you realise. He just kept singing them and was really good at it!
Even if you like Robbie but aren't overly keen on him, you have to go and see him at least once in your lifetime!
Even if you like Robbie but aren't overly keen on him, you have to go and see him at least once in your lifetime!
Did you go? Have you seen him before or do you want to go?
If you have any questions or anything, just leave a comment & I'll get back to you :D
A wordy post but I'll leave you with more pictures:
I shot mostly videos because they wouldn't keep still
Toodles x
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