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.
