Championship 2011 - St Louis - Your Thoughts Please?

[Cory]

Pros:

Short walk to dome floor from pits, short walk to pit fields
Comfortable seats in dome
(I feel bad just putting 2, because the much higher number of cons is going to make it sound like I had a bad experience, which isn't the case)

Cons:

Awful Hall of Fame placement. I'm guessing the majority of people never saw it, as it was hidden way off in the corner by FLL/College FIRST. Maybe there was a reason, but they ought to have displaced something else to put it front and center like in Atlanta.

Terrible signage. It was very confusing at times where things were. Galileo pits were the worst. It was really confusing at first.

Terrible crowd control. We showed up very early to ensure we got the seats we wanted, either in the dome, or in the pits. The venue staff either told us to stand one place and then let other people in front of us, or left various random doors unlocked such that other teams ended up in the dome/pits well in advance of them opening.

Event staff forcing everyone to leave the pits for the opening ceremonies. We got up at 4:30 in the morning so we could get to the event early enough to get the seats we wanted. We get them and then the volunteers force us to leave for the dome and hope that when we come back someone else hasn't sat in our seats. We pay $5,000 to come to the event. If we don't want to go see the opening ceremonies we shouldn't have to.

Limited food choices in the vicinity of the pit. I may have missed something, but it seemed like you had three choices. Hot dogs, corn dogs, and traditional stadium snacks. There was that little "cafe" but they had a limited selection and I heard it was pretty bad.

Volunteers being extremely over zealous about safety glasses in the pit entrance. If all you are doing is walking to the pit fields, why do you need safety glasses? Compounded by the fact that they will not hand out safety glasses to team members (I understand the reasoning, but come on, just let people walk to the field without them).

Rude volunteers on multiple occasions. Not the fault of St Louis or FIRST even, really. There's always going to be a few.

Minor, but I'm fairly certain that the event staff mopped every single row of seats and the concourse inside the dome with soda every night. It was that sticky.