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It's a Monday evening at Hard Rock Live, Orlando, and I’m surrounded by scores of beautiful young women wearing flower crowns, white dresses, Capri pants, cut-offs — virtually every outfit you may have seen Lana Del Rey wearing at any given point is on display in this crowd.
The scene is a mass chaos. Thousands of fans wait for the venue doors to open; the very first soul in line started her Lana vigil at 6 a.m.!
As I stand near the entrance waiting for my escort into the show, I witness confusion in the waiting crowd regarding Hard Rock’s new ticketless system, where you get in via the credit card used to purchase tickets to the show. Some frustrated fans — who'd purchased their tickets this past fall and were involved in the recent Target ordeal — arrived with new credit cards that didn’t match their ticket purchases and are forced to wait in the box-office line for resolution. But all the ticketing chaos, budding spring heat, or hours waiting in line doesn't appear to dampen the spirits of the waiting fans, and when the doors open around 7 p.m., the general admission crowd rushes in and straight to the front of the stage.
The official start time is 8 p.m. The frequent chants of “Lana, Lana, Lana” start, then quickly fade, and every stage tech is greeted with a roar before the crowd realizes it's not Lana. An EMT clues me in that the Lana won’t be making her entrance until much later, so I sit and admire the stage setup with its lush palms, flickering candles and scattered driftwood trees.
At 9:15 p.m., Lana Del Rey takes the stage to the cheers and screams of 3,000 fans. Hard Rock is officially sold out.
And it was completely worth the wait ... well, maybe not a wait with a 6 a.m. start... but still, it was a great show.
