2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Rynocorn]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

This is a huge problem! I know that at Peachtree this year, the walkways on the bleachers were completely full of sitting kids to the point that everyone had to stand in order to let one person down from the top row of seats. This mainly occurred during finals with the pits closed, but all of the seats were always full. On the other hand, Smokey Mountain had plenty of seats but somehow was the only regional I saw without a live webcast on TBA. These small issues go a long way to helping people have a better experience with FIRST.