Radio City Christmas Spectacular

What better way to start off the Christmas season than to head over to Radio City to catch the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, starring the world famous Radio City Rockettes! When you think of Christmas in New York, one of the things you MUST do is to catch the ever popular Christmas Spectacular.

We bought our tickets relatively early, sometime in late August. It can be quite difficult to get tickets now, especially for weekend shows. Also, if you buy your tickets early, you can usually get good deals. We bought ours from a Broadway discount website and paid $54 per person for the Orchestra level seats, 50% off the usual $108 price. It was a really good deal, our seats had perfect full view of the stage and was pretty close to the front too.

If you are going to watch the Christmas Spectacular, remember to go early. The doors open one hour before the show and there is usually a long line to get in. You can also buy food, drinks and souvenirs at the foyer before the show. Remember to collect your free 3D glasses and playbill before you are seated inside the concert hall. You would need the glasses for the show. Shown in the photo is the souvenir book ($15), the playbill, 3D glasses and our tickets.

With all the hype about the Christmas Spectacular, what can I say about the show after watching it? I would give it a two thumbs up and more!! It was rightly named the Christmas Spectacular, it was indeed SPECTACULAR! I've always seen the Rockettes on TV but to see them in real life was truly amazing. With their eye high kicks and superb choreography, I have not seen such precision and uniformity in any dance group before. The whole 90 minutes was just non stop action and fun, from a 3D experience on Santa's sleigh, 'snow' falling in the concert hall, an actual ice skating rink appearing on stage to Santa flying and fireworks. There were also live camels, sheep and donkeys in the nativity scene! My favorite part of the show was the popular Rockettes "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" and also the "New York at Christmas" segments. No photography is allowed in the concert hall, so I have taken some photos from the Radio City website.

I think photos doesn't really do the show justice, so here is a short video clip of the show (remember to turn off the blog background music before you load the video). Now I understand why the Radio City Christmas Spectacular has been an enduring Christmas tradition for over 75 years. I'm so glad I went, you should too. Remember to go get tickets before they are sold out!! If you must choose one show to watch this season, this is it!