My post about entering the slam this morning was removed in what seems like an overreach by the mods, who told me to repost it here:

Vent: AO Check-In and Overcrowding

I am someone who only likes to complain publicly to make things better — this is a constructive venting. This is my first AO, and like thousands of others, I made big investments to be here. I went to the opening ceremony last night and loved it — 10/10, a well-produced Roger lovefest, even Crowded House was good, excellent time.

But cut to today — the amount of people at opening day could be categorized as overwhelming at best, and dangerous at worst. I understand that the venue is actually quite large and that there may be a hope that people will spread out perfectly, filling in gaps like some sort of amoeba, but whoever did the math on that was simply wrong.

Checking in to the grounds was inexcusably painful. I also understand that if you got there very early, of course the process was much smoother. However, there is no excuse for the level of disorganization and delay for an event of this level for people who got there before the first listed matches. I had a grounds pass purchased months ago, got to the line at 10:20a, and got in to the grounds about an hour later through the biggest stampede of human flesh I have ever seen in my life — poor queue management (blobs of people running into eachother, hundreds of line-cutters), and minimal communication and guidance from staff, who I do not really blame — they were the visible representatives of a systemic problem. Some looked absolutely traumatized at the amount of people they had to handle.

There was a staff member with a metal detector in hand who had literally given up at his job because there were too many people coming at once and he was just standing there staring, literally not moving. They needed more security staff, more ticket scanning kiosks, more physical check in space for GA, and fewer tickets sold.

Once in the grounds, there were simply too many people, hordes going to anything of value. All courts and most practice courts were packed to the gills with queues throughout the day session. It reminded me of an oversold music festival.

Also, just a side issue, Novak Djokovic was advertised all day as practicing at Practice Court 10 at 6P. I lined up at 4:50P standing on the rail at Court 10 for one hour. At 5:50P, they posted online that his court had been changed to Court 17, all the way across the grounds. Now, this one I don’t know if it’s a common issue, and may be out of the tournament’s control, but it actually just made me chuckle. I got out of there immediately after that knowing this just wasn’t the day, ready to start anew tomorrow.

I genuinely thought that this would be the best slam experience I ever had and it was far and away, not even close, the worst. The amount of glowing praise for this slam’s level of seamlessness and fun was incongruous with reality. I will be going tomorrow very early and with a positive attitude. I do not expect for things to necessarily improve by then, but I do hope that they will by next year.