A world class display from Danny Boyle. What a day for the British folk. If you guys missed this world event, you missed out on a lot. The entrance of the athletes was long and arduous as always but the display before that was amazing. Cameos from James Bond and Mr. Bean truly ripened this event to a sweet success while the theme was the progress that Britain made as a nation and its contributions to this world stretching from Music to the Industrial Age.

I didn't see the past Olympics in Beijing because unlike most people I'm actually informed about the atrocities Tibet face (but never mind that) so this was special.

Huge respect to Danny Boyle for masterminding this awesome event. Did any of our British users witness the fireworks or even attend this ceremony?

Wasn't as good as Beijing Olympics, but it was a satisfying ceremony, I guess.

What I really admired about this was the theme. It really encapsulated everything we know about GB. Plus Rowan Atkinson's cameo was just heart warming. AND they should have put in Muse instead of Arctic Monkeys. There I said it.

I have to agree with Heisinburg on this one. Mind you, I'm not British, but I didn't really like this openning cereony. The few highlights I enjoyed was the joining of the rings & the fusion of the torches. Other than that, I was mostly saying to myself, "WTF?"
Again, this is just my opinion. No insult intended.

I enjoyed it espically the mr bean part what a lad! lol

i do agree with koldimere on the artic monkeys should of been replaced with muse

The best was when the queen jumped out of the helicopter

I thought it was excellent, unless your British it wouldn't have been easy to understand everything that was going on.

i thought it was awesome, you just need to know the history to understand. 

For my part, I understood full well the historical nuances. If the director's plan was to portray a brief history of the british isles, I think he didn't do that inclusive a job. He spent tons of time on specific periods whulst completing leaving out other periods of great significance. Also, I found it a bit amusing, although not surprising, that it was really a portrayal of English history. There was little to no ref. to Scotland or Wales in the ceremony. My 2 cents.

@Footaholic yeah that's true. It mostly concentrated only on England. There are so much fools on the internet saying they didn't understand the ceremony or there were a lack of fireworks and lights. "That's because you don't have an international mindset dummies!!!" I lose faith in humanity sometimes :/

MR Bean had me in stitches. 

It was English history because it is the London olympics at the end of the day despite playing as team GB.

‘It was a social worker’s history of Britain, a nation of simple
peasants, crushed and besmirched by evil top-hatted capitalists, but
rescued in the end by the NHS, immigration, the suffragettes and the
egalitarian strains of pop music.

I half-expected the giant Voldemort to transform itself into a
menacing Thatcher figure, trampling, slashing and cutting every nice
nurse in sight, and tossing bedsteads out of the stadium with a callous
sneer.

It is a strange sort of nation that can turn a hospital bed into a
symbol of national pride, especially in an era when you can die of
thirst in one. 

But most people under 40 have been taught not to have pride in their
country, so the Health Service is all they’ve got left. They have been
cheated of any real knowledge of history. I’m not talking here about the
Armada or the Empire – it’s hard to trumpet military glory when you’ve
scrapped the armed forces, and the Olympics might not be the place for
that in any case.

It’s our dogged insistence on liberty of thought, speech and
assembly, that needs to be celebrated, in a world where arbitrary power
and censorship are stronger every day. It is our greatest gift to
mankind and we don’t even know it’s ours.

I’m sure Danny Boyle could have found a way of portraying that great
tradition of limited government and human freedom that grew out of Magna
Carta and flows through our history, and that of the world, like a
mighty stream.

But to do that, he might have needed a few more words and a bit less
drumming, miming and dancing. It was strange how little use he made of
that other great possession of ours, the English language. Where were
Dickens or Wordsworth, Keats or Tennyson?

As for Shakespeare, I suppose it would now actually be subversive for
such an occasion to include the thrilling words of John of Gaunt’s
dying speech ‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England’,
for ‘England’ and ‘English’ are words that social workers don’t like to
hear.....

There is something unpleasantly totalitarian about the near-unanimity on
the wonderfulness of the Olympic Games. I don’t claim to represent a
majority opinion. What polls exist seem to suggest that my view is a
minority one. But I do think that many people are keeping quiet about
their doubts, much as they did during the Diana frenzy. Also, I think
the fear of having the ‘wrong’ opinion is at least as great as it has
been in any period of peacetime, and that is the really serious matter.
The range of opinion which it is permissible to hold, without the fear
of ostracism and possibly career damage, is getting narrower." - Peter Hitchens