After the expedition of trying to find our reserved parking place in the Chicago traffic, we walked and explored the downtown area. Hanna wanted to be sure that she didn't miss anything, so it was her plan to arrive to the concert 6 or more hours early. Thus, we didn't spend as much time exploring as I would have liked. We walked around Soldier Field, most likely more than once, before figuring out which line we needed to stand in. Since we had seats on the first deck, we had to go in at one of the tunnels. We said goodbye to Tim and went to stand in line. He decided to go explore a little on his own, find some food, and come back when the show was over.
Hanna and I headed down in the tunnel only to be met by a long line and it was only about 3 pm in the afternoon. As we were standing in the crowd I noticed all of the parents that had come along as chaperons. There I was standing in a crowd of a few hundred girls aging from 16 to 10 and their parents. .....To make the experience more ...exciting, as the floor of the tunnel sloped down it provided a small area where the inside of the stadium could be seen. Now keep it mind that it wasn't just an open window. There was a screen and different parts of the wall that prevented you from seeing people clearly. You could tell it was a person, but you couldn't see that person's face or really tell much about them. So when a group of people came to stand in front of the screen from inside the stadium, the entire group of teenage girls erupted into screaming because they all thought it was One Direction. This lasted until the gates were finally opened. One little girl, maybe 7, was crying because everyone one else was screaming, which supposedly meant that they saw one of the One Direction members and she didn't get to see.
Inside the stadium was a little better in terms of the screaming until it got closer to the concert starting. We were sitting on the first deck at the right side of the stadium. This meant that you could somewhat see people moving around backstage. Thus, anytime of the the girls in my section thought they saw one of the One Direction members moving around back stage they started screaming, which meant that the entire section started screaming. At one point my sister was like "OMG Sara I saw Harry. He waved at me." I responded for the sake of my ears, "Do not tell anyone."
A few hours later the concert started. 5 Seconds of Summer played first for about an hour. They were a pretty good opener. Then like all concerts there was an hour wait for the main band. In between the stadium was playing Top 40 songs, so the whole stadium was celebrating in song for a good hour. Much easier to listen to than screaming. However, once One Direction came out the screaming didn't stop for about 4 hours.
As someone that is not a super fan, a word I would use to describe most of the girls there, One Direction gave a great concert. They played 2 albums of songs with so many firework performances throughout the show that you were really never sure when the show was going to end. Come to find out during the show, the stadium was sold out that night and every night for the weekend. The Chicago Bears should be jealous. Just think, 61,500 thirteen year old's all together busting everyone's ear drums for 3 days straight.
After the concert we were greeted by hundreds of fathers sitting outside of the stadium. Dads of course would not want to sit through something like that, so they did what Dads do and sat outside and waited for it to be over. Tim sat with them. After asking him how waiting went, he mentioned that he could hear the screaming about 5 blocks away when he had gone to get food. That fact did not shock me. He also mentioned that every time the fireworks went off him as well as the Dad's were thinking to themselves, "Great, it's almost over." However, they were bummed to find that those fireworks were followed by another hour or more of music.
Overall, I would say that the concert was a success.
