michael luther wrote:We are starting to work on the 2010 show, and wanted to get everyone's input on what next years theme should be?
I'll think about the theme, but you need to know this up front:
HAVE MORE THAN TWO TICKET-TAKERS AT THE GATE!!!!
We drove 3-1/2 hours from Cleveland, and the traffic came to a standstill 100 yards short of the freeway exit. We crawled the rest of the way, watching the show out the windows. Actually, we would have gotten to the gate faster if we'd exited the van and literally crawled.
I saw the Battle of Britain flight (my reason for coming) as airplane-shaped dots in the far distance. We caught a very brief glimpse of the B-52 and the Hueys behind some trees as the Spads orbited overhead, waiting for their turn to make strafing passes on show center. We saw lots of people turning around or just parking to watch what they could for free.
When we finally got to the gate, there were two-count-em-two ticket-takers. I had worked up a full head of steam by that point, and unloaded on the hapless volunteer who surely had nothing to do with the abysmal lack of planning by the show organizers.
Please tell the old fellow who was on the left-hand lane late on Saturday that the @#$%^&*() in the red van apologizes.
We finally parked and exited our van as Will's MiG and the Collings Phantom (the next-to-last act before the Blues, which were the other reasons for coming) were already in the air.
Take a clue from the Cleveland show at Burke Lakefront, which has a similar issue of LOTS of parking acreage behind a natural chokepoint at the airport gate: Get traffic through the gate as fast as possible and have it fan out to a half-dozen ticket/cash-taking points
inside the gate.