The Big Orange is back for New Year’s Eve in Miami. But it’s different this year
The Big Orange is back, but it’s not The Big Orange you knew and loved.
As the New Year lurches into view — 2023? How did that happen? — Bayfront Park celebrates, with a free outdoor concert and fireworks display. A traditional counterpart is the laser countdown clock, which measures The Big Orange’s inexorable crawl up the side of the InterContinental Hotel.
Yes. Here in Miami, we strive ever upward while everybody else drops.
But this year, the giant smiling Big Orange of our youth — a 2,000-pound 35-foot-high icon created by industrial artist Steve Carpenter — is gone. Instead, a digitized version of the Orange will be launched 400 feet up the side of the bayside hotel.
The digital Orange stepped in for duty for the first time in 2021, when the team that put the physical Orange together tested positive for COVID. In 2020, the pandemic canceled the entire event for the first time in three decades.
Tony Albelo, CEO of Engage Live, the company that produces the Bayfront event, said that his group decided to use the digital Orange again because the InterContinental Hotel has been undergoing renovations that made the physical Orange, which hangs from a hoist and requires scaffolding, impractical.
This doesn’t mean the physical Orange is dead, however.
“The goal would be to have the original Orange back,” Albelo said. “I’m all about tradition and history, and if we can get the original back up, we will. . . . But I’ve looked at photos, and in pictures it’s hard to tell the difference between them.”
Besides, the physical Orange isn’t even truly original: “In true Miami fashion, in 2016 it went through a face lift,” Albelo said. “The original was neon. The new one has LED lights. It’s more reliable.”
Before the Orange rises, of course, the party revs up over at Bayfront Park, with musical performances by Willy Chirino, Arturo Sandoval, Amaury Gutiérrez Aymeé Nuviola and Lena Burke, plus many others. There will also be a special presentation by singer Nomcebo Zikode from South Africa, performing in Miami for the first time.
Parking at Bayfront Park is limited, but the Metromover station is right outside the venue, and ride-sharing options are available.
Bayfront New Year’s Eve 2023
Where: Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
When: 6 p.m.-1 a.m.
Cost: Free; VIP packages available starting at $249; eventbrite
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