An HOUR to get into Lucas Oil Stadium????

[DrumCorpsRelic]

On 8/16/2022 at 11:51 AM, dannyboy said:

DCI hires the stadium. DCI is the client. The Stadium (and their subcontractors) are at their service, no?

I'd suggest if their contract doesn't specify how many security metal detectors will be open, they sure as hell better add that.

Why was this not a problem in the past?

 

Who say's it wasn't! A good friend of mine who attended all three days shared with me on the phone, that the one concession stand he found open, had one person behind the counter preparing the $5.00 Hot Dogs and Selling the $10.00 Beers. He also found a large number of Open Stairways and Escalators were either barricaded closed, and the downward escalators inoperable!  The horror stories abound over the real "Cluster ####" attending patrons found upon arriving at Lucas Oil Stadium."

I guess I should count myself "fortunate" as a handicapped individual using a walker, in having to suddenly cancel last Tuesday, August 9th, all my Flight and and 5 nights of Hotel Reservations along with my refundable $175.00 Allianz Insured DCI Tickets. Apparently the best $2000.00 in savings I could have ever asked for.

PS: I thoroughly Enjoyed DCI's Tom Blair's Direction and his Crews, Field Managers, Production, Camera Coverage, superb HD Audio/Video presentation of all 35-WC+OC Corps Live performances, along with FloMarchings playback, rewind options, it almost made be feel that "I Was There". BRAVO to ALL AND DCI for it's once in a lifetime, Spectacular 50th Anniversary World Championships and World Champion Logistics. WOW and Many THANKS.

[NJbirder]

I was there all three days and noted the lack of staffing from the get go in the seating area. We arrived on Saturday to the masses at about 5:45. Quickly checked here and social platforms to see if we could move towards the gate, but an LOS employee told us (waved us back) and many others to turn around regardless of whether we had bags or not. We then joined the serpentine line, which I was glad to see was moving with little anger. Literally ran through LOS and screamed into our (occupied) seats as the Troopers were stepping off.

Who is at fault? All three parties to a degree. I should have been there earlier (but I shouldn't have had to have been). DCI should have not ignored the situation (10 minutes-really? Clearly needed to be out of the building by midnight with the fastest retreat I've ever seen.). LOS needs to get their act together (yeah, hiring and staffing are tough. Change your model to make your staff feel valued. That isn't just money).

I have done this kind of work over the years in major venues, and while I obviously haven't seen this contract, I sense DCI has abdicated any interest in concession sales since the very beginning. (I have been attending regularly since 2009 in this venue.) But the gate management was unacceptable. There must be a formula that is followed to know how many doors for how many tickets, and this was woefully inadequate. I was fortunately able to fire up Flo on my phone and was monitoring what was going on inside as we proceeded towards the door.

[Terri Schehr]

8 hours ago, oldbandguy said:

Well ticket prices ARE going up...and by significantly more than $5 a ticket.  And that price hike was determined before the gates opened on Thursday.

"If you build it, they will come...and stand in line."

I paid $756 for two - three packs a week ago.  I can’t remember how much it was last year and I don’t want to go through all of my credit cards records to find out.  I think it was probably about $50 more for two people last week. 

[siletzspey]

On 8/17/2022 at 2:24 AM, keystone3ply said:

@siletzspeyI think he's referring to the North line were everyone walking from the North downtown area hotels.  The "South line" was probably coming form the South parking areas.  But they were all trying to enter one gate: Verizon East Gate which has basically 4 lines to enter.      

Thanks for clarifying.

Indeed, the north and south "street" lines converged at just the East Gate, and then those two street lines somewhat reshuffled into the 4 to 7 "check station" lines circa the stairs. I have a photo that seems to show ~6 busy check station lines. Like a highway accident choke-point, I was just observing that the time to get EVERYONE thru seemed fixed by the check station count, but that depending on what street line you stood in, some INDIVIDUALs zipped thru while others (me) stood in line for nearly an hour. More check stations + LOS/DCI staff directing the street lines would have made entry times more equitable for all.

[Trumpet2]

11 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:

I paid $756 for two - three packs a week ago.  I can’t remember how much it was last year and I don’t want to go through all of my credit cards records to find out.  I think it was probably about $50 more for two people last week. 

I think it was about $680 last year for super 3. The price increase for next year didn’t seem too drastic to me

[Chief Guns]

32 minutes ago, Trumpet2 said:

I think it was about $680 last year for super 3. The price increase for next year didn’t seem too drastic to me

I reserved my Super 3 for 2023 couple days ago. I paid $756 for two super 3. 

[Trumpet2]

4 minutes ago, Chief Guns said:

I reserved my Super 3 for 2023 couple days ago. I paid $756 for two super 3. 

I did too, the $680 was for last year’s. 

[Vidal28Rdg]

On 8/17/2022 at 5:16 PM, C.Holland said:

Some insight for you all from a former venue operator,  and even some in the state of indiana, you can't magically make poorly paid door staff do a better job.  they already have a cruddy job equal to lost luggage. they're told very little about what's going on, theyre told to rummage through your stuff, do it quickly, but aren't what door they are put at until very last minute, and that they're the only door. When we came back from covid, many decided the pay wasn't worth dealing with the general population.  The venue will often staff it as best as they can within the budget (see that's also a magical limiting factor here), and within the knowledge provided by the renter of the space. 

see also. the factors for how a venue is staffed in front of house. operations information provided by the rental client, budget of rental client for the event, and availability of all possible staff on the day of event.  There's also a factor at arena's of "how many entrances do we need? will people trickle in or show up all at once?"  Which that information comes from the client, and then staffing is allocated by the venue operator.  

Concessions is a tougher ball of wax.  because again, see poorly paid jobs that deal with normally not great customers. Barclay's Center in Brooklyn will often have many concessions closed for Nets games due to lack of people who want to work the crummy job for crummy pay.   

 

 

I work at AT&T stadium as an usher/ticket taker/bag checker etc. the company I work for handles all of those areas, and even then they’re not the only company at any event in the stadium, AT&T stadium staff handle similar roles, other hospitality roles. But anyways, the company sends out to workers available events far in advance that they can pick to work at. If for some “magical” reason, DCI championship weekend was plopped down at AT&T stadium, considering DCI normally is already selling tickets for DCI finals week well in advance, the company would know as well that DCI booked the venue and they need workers August 11th-13th and would’ve put it on the schedule MONTHS in advance for an employee like myself to schedule for that day if I so chose.

For the day of, workers are given an itinerary of the day, including expected attendance, time gates open, the time the event “kicks off” and the end time, other miscellaneous stadium info for that day in particular. They get a little slip of what section they’re staying in/ticket taking/bag checking, many employees in the sections, and a number doing the ticket taking and gatekeeping.

I don’t know if DCI would shoehorn what apparently is a limited and unmotivated event staff if it’s Lucas Oil’s or DCI’s own staff is something I don’t know. I would say the staff I’ve worked with is usually very personable, and while not everyone’s super motivated, the gig isn’t stressful and we wanna get people through as quickly as we can, and we schedule ourselves for whatever event we wanna do at AT&T stadium, and people respond to emails about new dates. I guess what I’m trying to say to DCI or LOS is that it’s not hard to find enough staff for your event, especially when it’s so far out in advance. Do better!

Edited August 19, 2022 by Vidal28Rdg

[Jeff Ream]

46 minutes ago, Vidal28Rdg said:

I work at AT&T stadium as an usher/ticket taker/bag checker etc. the company I work for handles all of those areas, and even then they’re not the only company at any event in the stadium, AT&T stadium staff handle similar roles, other hospitality roles. But anyways, the company sends out to workers available events far in advance that they can pick to work at. If for some “magical” reason, DCI championship weekend was plopped down at AT&T stadium, considering DCI normally is already selling tickets for DCI finals week well in advance, the company would know as well that DCI booked the venue and they need workers August 11th-13th and would’ve put it on the schedule MONTHS in advance for an employee like myself to schedule for that day if I so chose.

For the day of, workers are given an itinerary of the day, including expected attendance, time gates open, the time the event “kicks off” and the end time, other miscellaneous stadium info for that day in particular. They get a little slip of what section they’re staying in/ticket taking/bag checking, many employees in the sections, and a number doing the ticket taking and gatekeeping.

I don’t know if DCI would shoehorn what apparently is a limited and unmotivated event staff if it’s Lucas Oil’s or DCI’s own staff is something I don’t know. I would say the staff I’ve worked with is usually very personable, and while not everyone’s super motivated, the gig isn’t stressful and we wanna get people through as quickly as we can, and we schedule ourselves for whatever event we wanna do at AT&T stadium, and people respond to emails about new dates. I guess what I’m trying to say to DCI or LOS is that it’s not hard to find enough staff for your event, especially when it’s so far out in advance. Do better!

DCI isnt loaded with staff. most of their volunteers are out manning warmups and corps parking

[Vidal28Rdg]

9 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:

DCI isnt loaded with staff. most of their volunteers are out manning warmups and corps parking

That is good to know! I don’t know much about how DCI staffs their marquee events, especially at an NFL stadium like Lucas Oil so that’s what I wanna know more about. I’m of the opinion that it is also mainly on Lucas Oil stadium event staff operators to be more on point as they know this event is on the calendar in august every year for the foreseeable future, in whatever extent they’re involved in

Edited August 19, 2022 by Vidal28Rdg