[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I absolutely loved the ban and enforcement on banners and flags being brought into the dome. When people are anxiously trying to see every detail of every match, it is simply rude how many teams park a flag or banner right in front. Seriously people, have some respect for those sitting behind you.
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Finally, something needs to be done about the saving seats issue. On Friday morning, I encountered three students saving an entire two rows, aisle to aisle. I show up with only myself and my bag, take two seats total, am told to move, tell them I will if and when the rest of their team comes, and to my astonishment they moved my things moved for me and I got an the evil stare for the rest of the day. I was in disbelief. There is no reason single or a handful of individuals should not be allowed a close seat when dozens upon dozens are empty.

If you want the seats, put your people in them. Otherwise they are up for grabs. End of story.

The business of banning flags explains a confrontation that occurred with our drive team (and several other teams, I suspect) with a member of security on Friday afternoon. He would not allow us to take our flag (on a flag pole) onto the floor of the dome. Other teams had their flags out there for the MC's in the early matches so, apparently, word came down from the top that flags waving around on the field before the matches were ruining the event for the folk in the stands. (Detect any sarcasm here?) The guard literally ran after one of our team members to force us to leave the flag behind. He then said wouldn't be responsible for watching the flag while we were in the dome. WHAT A CROCK! We torn the flag off of the pole, ungraciously dropped the pole on the floor and proceeded to our match. We recovered the pole after the match. On Saturday, we smuggled our flag onto the field to join the many teams with "illegal" flags on Galileo.

As far as saving seats, what's going to happen when the number of spectators grow significantly for FIRST events. I don't see how teams will be able to sit as a group (the drive teams and pit crews will need to fend for themselves to watch eliminations if they're not selected). This is something that FIRST will need to address soon, or things might start getting ugly. (Not all of the spectators will have a good grasp of GP).