Liverpool River of Light 2024: This year's waterfront trail is the best yet - but be prepared to queue

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Liverpool’s River of Light is back for 2024, offering some of the best installations I’ve ever seen.

The free festival launched last week, with the theme of ‘Play’ offering fun and interactive experiences.

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But, safety concerns were raised shortly after its launch, with a local dad telling the LDRS it was a “free for all” during his visit on Saturday (October 26), and a crush waiting to happen.”

A spokesperson for Liverpool Council responded that October 26 was “one of the busiest on record” for the event, but “at no point were people in danger.” They added: “We understand the crowd size may have, at times, been disconcerting for some visitors.”

As a result, a one-way system has now been implemented around the Albert Dock and queuing lanes have been set up for some of the interactive installations - including ‘Piano Walk’ and ‘Impulse’.

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Liverpool City Council/Xplorer Studio

As someone who has attended every staging of the River of Light since it began, I headed to the waterfront trail on Wednesday (October 30) to see the installations for myself, and see if the new measures were working as intended.

Knowing the festival often leads to heavy congestion around the city centre, my family and I headed into town via train shortly after 5.00pm, arriving at 5.30pm. As soon as we stepped out of James Street station we could see it was busy but walked over to the ‘No Place Like Gnome’ installation on Derby Square. We were able to grab some great photos of the huge gnomes and walk around the display with ease - even with a pram - so we were pretty pleased with the start of our evening out.

Liverpool River of Light 2024 - No Place Like Gnome.Liverpool River of Light 2024 - No Place Like Gnome.
Liverpool River of Light 2024 - No Place Like Gnome. | Emma Dukes

Next, we headed to Exchange Flags to see ‘Checkmate’, a gigantic inflatable chessboard designed by Amigo & Amigo. Again, it was easy to take photos and move around, though we were expecting the waterfront sections of the trail to be the busiest.

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‘Firefly Field’ at Liverpool Parish Church was next on our radar, and definitely one of my favourites. It was busy but six of us, plus my little nephew sleeping in his pram, managed to walk around and not get separated from each other - and get some cute videos of the ‘fireflies’ buzzing around.

Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Firefly Field.Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Firefly Field.
Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Firefly Field. | Emma Dukes

We strolled over to the Pier Head to see ‘Impulse’ next, our first interactive installation of the night. The 15 see-saws are now surrounded by railings, with visitors needing to queue to play on them. When we got there, the queue was huge but we were willing to wait as my niece had been so excited about them.

People were let on in groups, with each group getting around five minutes on the see-saws before being instructed to move on by stewards and honestly, the time flew. I think we waited around 40 minutes in total - which is a long time for kids to wait - but the queue moved a lot quicker than we thought it would.

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Next up was ‘Piano Walk’ which again had a long queue. We chose not to wait for this one but we were still able to grab some pictures and move on to ‘Bubblesque’ at Mann Island. This was another personal favourite and the one I had been the most excited for, and we didn’t need to queue at all to take our photos.

Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Bubblesque.Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Bubblesque.
Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Bubblesque. | Emma Dukes

By this point, we had been exploring the trail for about an hour and 15 minutes and really hadn’t seen any of the chaotic scenes we’d been hearing about. The signage dotted around was clear, and every installation had stewards around to help. We certainly felt safe - and we had not had any moaning from my eight-year-old niece.

Heading across the bridge to the Albert Dock was where we experienced our only issue of the evening, with large crowds pushing to get across. Even with the new one-way system in place, we waited around ten minutes and struggled to move with the pram at times but, once on the bridge, the foot traffic moved quickly.

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I can’t comment on all of the installations on the docks, because we had already decided to miss ‘Positive Spin’ and ‘Illusion Hole’ and head to ‘Bunch of Tulips’, because of time limitations we had set for ourselves.

Walking across to Liverpool ONE, we passed the ‘Lightbattle III’ interactive bikes, and it actually only had a really short queue. We easily crossed over to Thomas Steers Way and got lots of fab pictures of the huge illuminated tulips, before heading back to the train station.

Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Bunch of Tulips.Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Bunch of Tulips.
Liverpool River of Light 2024 - Bunch of Tulips. | Emma Dukes

In total, we saw eight of the twelve installations in around two hours - and that’s including a 45 minute queue for the see-saws. We were all really impressed with this year’s offerings, which I personally think are the best yet. But, if we had wanted to see all twelve and make use of the interactive features, we definitely would have been out for much longer.

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The concept of ‘Play’ is really lovely and my niece getting to play on the see-saws definitely stopped her being unhappy with all of the walking but, some of the other interactive installations just aren’t big enough to cope with the demand and potentially queuing for up to an hour to play on ‘Piano Walk’ just didn’t seem feasible.

That being said, at no point did we feel unsafe and we actually said to each other that this year’s staging felt easier in terms of finding the installations thanks to the signs and stewards. We had a lovely time and definitely didn’t feel deterred from attending again and I felt the same pride I feel every year when our city stages such a brilliant, free event.

If you’re hoping to play on all of the interactive attractions, I would definitely recommend arriving as soon as the lights come on at 5.00pm and head to the Pier Head and Albert Dock first to get a good place in the queues. Full details of Liverpool’s Right of Light 2024 can be found here.

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