Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
That's my point exactly! This thread is blaming FIRST for not doing anything (just look at the thread title...), specifically because nothing has been communicated yet. It's blame before the fact, not after the event.
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I'm not blaming anyone. I just want to see a solution. I've changed the thread title...can we just focus on the problem now (as my post clearly did)?
For those who were not there, in 2012 and 2013 instead of having two separate entrances there was one entrance in the plaza in the front of the dome. This was for all four fields and the pits. There was no signage indicating which doors would open, so people spread across all the doors to be sure they would get into an open door and then as soon as doors opened, everyone collapsed on the 2-3 (out of 20) doors that were open and caused a stampede.
There was zero crowd control, causing teams showing up 30 min before doors open to be able to shove in with the teams that had been waiting 2+ hours. There was no line or any kind of security. Just one yellow jacket event security person who quickly realized they had zero effective authority when there were 1000+ amped up teenagers in a massive blob with no kind of queue formed.
There was a guy from FIRST who clearly thought he was being entertaining and showed up with a megaphone moments before the doors opened, counted down "5-4-3-2-1" and then opened the doors, further inciting the stampede.
Once you squeezed through the door you had to either get up a flight of stairs and onto the Dome concource, or up a set of escalators, at which point everyone flat out sprinted to their division to try and get the best seats. This lead to more pushing/shoving/trampling and reports of fights.
To get to the pits you had to go all the way down the main hallway, which meant another mad sprint about 200 yards or so.
2011 was much better because you could line up outside the pit doors, inside the main hallway, eliminating the sprint (for the most part...there were still the pit fields). This left way fewer people trying to go through Entry A