Pitbull And Miami's Big Orange Ring In 2018

MIAMI — Fox may have turned out the lights on “Pitbull New Year's Eve Revolution," but Miami had nothing but dale for Mr. 305 as he rang in 2018 with thousands of his closest friends at Bayfront Park. Unllike that bone-chilling New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, revelers here enjoyed a gentle 66-degree kiss from mother nature to start the year off with a smile.

"New Year's Eve has been happening in Times Square for I don't know how many years. But God bless them," the singer told his Miami faithful. "You got to look at where you're at right now. You're bringing in 2018 with under 70-degree weather. You're bringing in 2018 in a way that the rest of the world wish they could. So I want you to appreciate. I want you to be grateful. And I want you to be proud."

But many longtime Pitbull fans were disappointed to learn that Mr. Worldwide's nationally televised New Year's Eve broadcast on Fox had been replaced with Steve Harvey this year. Some wondered if Harvey would flub the countdown, something that did not happen although his choice of wardrobe drew comparisons to a Batman villain that had taken over Times Square.

"Not cool. We're not happy," insisted 21-one-year-old college student Bayley Cron of St. Petersburg, Florida, who watched last year's Pitbull's New Year's Eve show on television and couldn't wait to see the show live with her mother and father after returning from a Caribbean cruise.

For Pitbull, this was the sixth straight New Year's Eve show that he has put on in Miami. Tens of thousands of people turn out each year just west of the Claude Pepper Fountain at Bayfront Park. "Dale" is the singer's ubiquitous catchphrase that he uses in songs and banter with fans on social media.

"It means a lot of things; it depends on how you're using it. It's my way of ­checking out — 'Dale, I'm out of here' — or my way of ­getting started," he explained in a 2015 interview with Billboard. "It's definitely the word I hear most. I travel around the world and run into people that speak no English, no Spanish and they say 'dale."

Unlike Times Square, here in Miami the "Big Orange," rises at midnight — rather than falls — to a spectacular 13-minute fireworks display just across Bayfront Park along the facade of the Intercontinental Hotel. The fireworks are shot off from a barge anchored in scenic Biscayne Bay.

"It's work to get it here and all that but then it's fun because I get to just hang out," explained Steve Carpenter, who designed and built the orange. His creation has been leading Miami's celebration for 32 years.

Carpenter said that his neon orange wasn't the first choice of city fathers. "They say it's the 33rd year because the first year they had a balloon. But the balloon was blowing all over. It didn't work out," he recalled.

In more than three decades, Carpenter said he has never been late raising the orange to its New Year's perch. "The funniest thing that ever happened? I don't know if I should tell you," he explained in an interview with Patch. "We were putting up the orange and there used to be a lot of foliage over there. We went up in the bushes. There was a girl naked in the bushes."

Officer Kenia Fallat of the Miami Police Department told patch that safety was paramount for officers here just as it is in Times Square. She said that Sunday's crowd was well behaved and there were no incidents.

The fireworks were followed by music until 12:30 a.m. This year's event also included the Worldwide NYE Food & Wine Festival which required a paid admission.

Pitbull's concert was made possible by the Bayfront Park Management Trust, a limited agency of the city of Miami, the mayor and the Miami City Commission.

Additional support was provided by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade mayor, the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners, the Greater Miami Host Committee and Bayside Marketplace.

Pitbull offered some words of wisdom to the many visitors who came from other parts of the country to see his show in Miami.

"Remember whatever happens in Miami never happened," he counseled. "It's a little bit different from Vegas."

Watch Pitbull's countdown to 2018 from Miami:

Photo gallery and video by Paul Scicchitano