Exiting MBS

Nah, I just enjoy giving the chronic whiners and complainers on here a hard time. I thought the stadium was pretty cool; nothing mind blowing. If you look at it rationally, expecting flawless operation on day 1, getting wildly upset by a few minor hiccups, assuming no improvements can/will be made, and then writing of the entire stadium as a failure is a pretty silly and emotional reaction. I have no immediate plans to go back, so no skin off my back either way.
I know I've said it, but lop the expensive roof off of the place any you have a really mediocre stadium.

Yea, the cheap food and free refills were great, but any stadium could do that. The only reason Blank did it is because, IIRC, he gets most or all of the cut of the vendor licensing and Atlanta gets no cut. He can afford to do it because he probably makes more anyway.
 
Agreed. I am certain I am not the only one who thought "People could die in this place"

One of the first things I said when we got to our upper deck seats was that I wouldn't be surprised if a fan died this season. It's not just the concourses -- the sections themselves are very steep with very narrow exits.

Plus the temporary (I assume) seats near the top have pretty low barriers. Would not shock me if some drunk person went tumbling over at some point.
 
One of the first things I said when we got to our upper deck seats was that I wouldn't be surprised if a fan died this season. It's not just the concourses -- the sections themselves are very steep with very narrow exits.

Plus the temporary (I assume) seats near the top have pretty low barriers. Would not shock me if I (drunk person) went tumbling over at some point.

Fixed punctuation.
 
One of the first things I said when we got to our upper deck seats was that I wouldn't be surprised if a fan died this season. It's not just the concourses -- the sections themselves are very steep with very narrow exits.

Plus the temporary (I assume) seats near the top have pretty low barriers. Would not shock me if some drunk person went tumbling over at some point.

Why did you think the seats were temporary? And why was their a whole group of seats on the UT side in the upper deck that had no one in them?
 
I'll have to disagree with the "figure it out" on the egress issue. Upon arrival about 6:30, I started to notice the pinch points and lack of exit ports on the skin of the structure in very short order. I was shocked and thought to myself, surely I'm missing something, no way in hell the Fire Marshall signed off on this. Then, as I slowly made my way through the perimeter corridors, I kept noticing stairwells going to the upper levels, not ramps....stairs. I thought , OK, maybe those are just to the suites, but no, after going almost 3/4 of the way around the stadium, no ramps. Hmmm, interesting, glad my seats are on level 100 I said to myself.

Anyway, I'm highly skeptical this is something they will be able to "fix" with a directional flow program. There are just not enough strategically located exits ports from the interior to the exterior, plain and simple. This is not a "software" issue, it's a "hardware" issue. You say 15 minutes to get from the upper deck to out of the building is not that bad, well, what if one of those tightly packed corridors became even marginally filled with smoke, with pinch points in front of you and behind you with no exit in between? That's not a far fetched scenario considering how many kitchens there are in that place. Best case is that even 2 minutes would seem like an eternity if your'e in really good physical shape, worst case it would be the last minutes/seconds of your life.

Not trying to be contrarian or overly negative. There were certainly things I liked. The 360 video board was quite impressive. The wider than normal seats were a big plus. The numerous bars and food vendors facilitated a well above average turnaround to get something to drink or eat. It was overall a very pleasant experience. Not sure it's a 1.5 Billion plus upgrade over the stadium it replaced, but an impressive facility nonetheless. But I know one thing, I won't be back until they completely address the egress issue by adding exit ports on the skin of that building.

That's reasonable, but I have to think that in an actual emergency, they'd have faster ways of routing people out of the building through additional stairwells and service areas that weren't available for use this weekend, as is the case in most buildings.
 
My understanding is that they stepped down the number of tickets they sold in BDS due to construction on the north stands, not because of lack of demand.

As I recall from what I read early on, it was both. There definitely was upper north construction, but IIRC they also said something about scaling to anticipated demand.

It seems like it would be pretty dumb to limit MBS to 40K if they could actually sell 55K (BDS capacity) for every game. That's leaving a lot of money on the table.

JRjr
 
Why did you think the seats were temporary? And why was their a whole group of seats on the UT side in the upper deck that had no one in them?
Full on GT side. Full for FSU vs Bama probably
 


Does anyone know this person? She was a twitter recommended follow for me and I had followed her for awhile, but she tweets like every 30 seconds or something all through the day about every little thing.

Surely one of you knows her?

MBS1.jpg
 
Why did you think the seats were temporary? And why was their a whole group of seats on the UT side in the upper deck that had no one in them?

They were clearly tacked on metal construction that was different than the rest of the stadium, and I know that MBS can have its capacity expanded for events like the Super Bowl.
 
They were clearly tacked on metal construction that was different than the rest of the stadium, and I know that MBS can have its capacity expanded for events like the Super Bowl.

Which ones were you referring to?
 
Which ones were you referring to?
Same ones as you I would guess. The highest sections, one on each sideline, mostly full for Tech but no one for Tennessee.
 
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The egress is awful. The upper and lower levels all funnel to the main level. there are not enough exits and the exits are restricted by the entry gate lanes. It was chaos getting out after the game and was dangerous. Ido not plan on going back!!!
 
Tech UT fans began arriving in big numbers 90 minutes before kickoff. At a 1 PM Falcons game 2/3 to 3/4 of the crowd enters about fifteen to twenty minutes before kickoff. That should be fun.
 
It's so easy, yet every major facility or park is constantly re-working and doing studies and updates aimed at improving crowd flow. It's almost as if people dont always behave exactly like the computer models said they would...crazy.
Were you even there? As an example, the north stairway from section 105 ends in a wall (back wall of a restroom). The logjam there is 100% predictable.

And 100% avoidable in the design phase.
 
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