About 9,400 visitors came to the beach to celebrate New Year's Eve on Wednesday.
Ocean City's 23rd annual First Night celebration came just shy of selling out at its cap of 10,000. Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Michele Gillian said Wednesday night that the event had a solid base of advance sales for all-inclusive admission buttons — in addition to the usual surge of event-day purchases.
Ocean City welcomed the New Year with a midnight fireworks display as a finale to its First Night celebration on Dec.. 31, 2014.
Crowds gathered on a sub-freezing but clear night to take advantage of a nonalcoholic New Year's Eve celebration that caters to families and includes 70 different entertainment programs at 16 venues throughout town.
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About 8,000 attended First Night just two months after Superstorm Sandy struck Ocean City in 2012, and last year saw a small increase in attendance.
Sitting elbow-to-elbow in a packed community room at St. Peter's United Methodist Church for the Abbott and Costello Show, Ocean City Public Relations Director Mark Soifer reflected on the success of Ocean City's First Night event.
He said he knew it had worked in other cities when a group proposed bringing it to Ocean City more than two decades ago. But he said it never could have taken off the way it has without the spirit of volunteerism that Ocean City is known for.
For the second year, the program included a temporary ice-skating rink (with a slippery non-ice surface) and nearby inflatables and kids' rides. An ongoing boardwalk reconstruction project has prevented Gillian's Wonderland Pier (a traditional staple of First Night) from opening for the event.
The Ocean City Historical Museum opened its doors for the first time on First Night and saw good traffic for a new exhibit on the Boardwalk fire of 1928 and all its regular displays.
Headline entertainment on the Ocean City Music Pier included the Original Blue Notes and the Trammps. The lineup also included traditional favorites such as Abbott and Costello impersonators at St. Peter's United Methodist Church, the "Lucky Guess Game Show" at the Ocean City Primary School and the Hegeman String Band at Ocean City High School.
The celebration ended with a midnight fireworks display.
Ocean City's New Year's celebration continues on Thursday with First Day festivities, including a 5K boardwalk run and the annual First Plunge polar bear swim. See our
Guide to First Day in Ocean City.
See highlights from First Night in the video above.
