SEC
The Atlanta Falcons are proud of the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but it looks like the facility may have a crowd-flow issue.
The stadium was used during the opening week of college football for the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Games. Alabama and Florida State squared off Saturday night with Tennessee and Georgia Tech playing Monday night.
Both games were exciting, but fans reported an issue when trying to leave the stadium following Monday night’s contest. Many fans who were in attendance and struggled to leave took to Twitter to voice their concerns and disappointment, via Reddit Twitter account:
#mercedesbenzstadium WTF? pic.twitter.com/EfefVRGOws
— David Peterson (@dpeterson101) September 5, 2017
It's scary bad getting out and they weren't letting anyone use the escalators. pic.twitter.com/wBhAq4xo0O
— Cody Fortune (@CodyFortune) September 5, 2017
Getting out of #MBStadium was a damn nightmare, took me 30 min going down a myriad of stairs to squueze out #TENNvsGT
— Neil (@RealNeilB) September 5, 2017
The game on the field is one thing, but the last thing anyone wants is an injury or incident while attending a sporting event. Fan safety is a chief concern, and it looks like the stadium staff will need to address the procedures for exiting smoothly.
Many? So 4 fans complained on twitter and now it’s an exit nightmare! I was at the game Saturday night and had no issues leaving, never heard anyone else complain either. Maybe the escalator was broken? Maybe people need more patience? People love to b**ch these days.
Oh, and maybe if Emily would of stopped tweeting about her entire exit experience while trying to walk through a massive amount of people, she wouldn’t have as many issues getting stuck, if her head was up paying attention to what’s going on around her instead of writing tweets on her phone.
Yeah, like she may have had a totally legit complaint but by tweet 7 pretty much everyone is like “please shut up”.
For sure…what did she expect her followers on Twitter to come save her? Write someone a serious complaint that works at MB Stadium and explain your experience, so hopefully they can change things. Tweeting your exit experience in real time, as if that’s going to change anything, is pointless and just begs for attention…which I suppose she got what she wanted and is getting plenty of it now, ha. You made your bed, Emily…
We were there. Exiting was terrible. It was a double overtime game, and everyone stayed until the final play. It took us 25 minutes to get from our seat to the main level to exit. Those posting on twitter are not exaggerating at all. If they had to evacuate that facility, it would be an absolute disaster. There is no way any fire marshall would have approved the exit plan we experienced last night. And, yes, they were blocking people from using the escalators, with hundreds, if not thousands, of people completely blocked by the non-functioning escalators. It seemed like they were trying to block the upper tiers from exiting until the lower levels were completely vacated. Blocking people in like herds of livestock without any explanation was not good. I saw people shoving the staff there that was trying to pen them in. Overall, the stadium is okay, but the flow of people leaving is a complete mess, and, if the need arose for a quick evacuation, it would be a deathtrap.
That sucks, hopefully they iron the kinks out then.
Dallas so much better. This stadium has issues. I was there Saturday njight and its a nigjhtm are getting to Marta Station. Inside, the video board cannot be seen fully from the upper seats and you miss any stats or info shown half way and above. They played loud music during breaks and drowned out the bands we wanted to hear, No gate info on tickets so you are just left to walk around the staduim, no scores for other games being played. Should have shown scores in the ribbons instead of the obnoxious adds, No game stats visible as they could not be seen clearly from the half blocked video board mentioned above, stats wrong. Lots of stiuuff needs to improve.
It was every bit as bad as the writers indicate. Maybe it was worse. I saw literally thousands of people from the upper middle and lower tiers funneled into the same hallway and sent the direction of two small doors. It was a nightmare and a powder keg just waiting for someone to set it off. I am not sure whether this can be fixed either. An entire side of the stadium has no exit doors. Thousands of fans are forced to all go the same direction into a very confined area to exit.
We had no issues at all. I mean, none that you wouldnt expect from 75,000 people all leaving at the same time. I was in the last group to go into MARTA (about 30 min after the game) and overhead the cops’ radio and they said that was the last batch of people and the dome was pretty much empty and everyone was on MARTA. Very impressive for 30 minutes. Now, if you were a freaking idiot and drove to the game then I have no idea what your experience was like, but if you are smart and rode MARTA to basically be done after 30 min was pretty impressive.
Emily’s twittering was excessive, but she was not incorrect.
If you were getting on a train 30 minutes after the game, you were not the last group to go into MARTA. My buddy and I spent half an hour simply trying to get out of the stadium from section 330. He eventually made it to MARTA but was still on a train at 12:51am when I was getting in bed.
I drove, and once I got out of the stadium, the walk to the car and drive to the interstate were non-issues.
I walked the entire length of the field without finding an exit. I saw multiple empty escalators. I saw multiple stair cases full of people who had no where to go because the stairs simply emptied out into larger crowds on the 100 level. There are no signs pointing to exits, no signs indicating which way to go for MARTA (Vine City to the west or CNN Center/Phillips Arena to the east), no directional signage at all. Apparently there are 4 gates, and 3 of them are on the same side of the stadium. It also appeared that each gate had a simple 2-door doorway like you’re walking into an Applebee’s, not a $1.6B stadium. I have tickets to a MLS ATL United game, and the upcoming Garth Brooks show, and am dreading the logistics of each event already…I hope they listen to the complaints, but I’m not optimistic much can be done to rectify them.
Right. Once I finally managed to exit, I looked back at the stadium on the side where I and most Bama fans were seated. There are ZERO exits for the entire length of the stadium on that side and they can’t very easily be added because the stadium features a precipice on that side. If you walked out over there, you’d fall into a chasm. So, yeah. Two little Applebee’s doors for about 30 thousand people. Not a good thing with the alcohol flowing as freely as it was that game. About half the people were blitzed, another half was mad about losing and everybody else was just tired as heck. I’m surprised there weren’t more serious injuries.
Also for clarity, I’m referring to the GT/TN game Monday night. I imagine at least some chunk of FSU fans left before the end on Saturday? On Monday, the full house emptied out at once…nightmare scenario. Should crowds be expected? Long waits? Of course. This was different.
At one point, the crowd was stopped on the 100 concourse to allow one of the bands to cross over, 2 band geeks at a time. Why would the marching bands not have access to a field tunnel? Ridiculous…
I was at the game in section 339. No problems at all exiting. Not sure what other people were dealing with but I was from my seat to the exit in about 10 mins. It was a lot of people, but it was flowing just fine.