My Last Belmont

[freddymo]

Originally Posted by tanner12oz

Pimlico has the same archaic facility with the same lack of funds but here's where things differ...i get a survey literally days after the preakness wanting my opinion of where they succeeded and where they failed
..

does Belmont do this? Cuz from what I'm reading its business as usual and they simply don't care...raising the beer $3 Friday vs Saturday was a little over the top.. Prices were far worse then any sporting event I have seen peanuts 5 hotdog 5 beer 10 pretzel 5

Again give the new hire a chance. When fixing an issue you need to hire someone to own the responsibility to make change. First step was done now its up to this person to get money and talent in places that matter. It really wasn't all that bad.

Preakness has a huge infield for the yahoos Belmont doesn't you kind of have to keep perspective in place. The infield plays a major roll in quelling the casual fans appetite for partying without subjecting the more ardent horse players to their brand of entertainment.

[freddymo]

Originally Posted by jms62

There were toilet issues in 2008. Why not bring in a boatload of portables? Why have 2 bartenders servicing a food stand or bar when there are 100K people. I hear your point about renovation but you need to look at past failures and create workarounds. It was all about maximizing profitability without regard to customer experience. Did I say it was awesome racing though?

You are looking for a huge amount of qualified day workers and then have to train them in 10 days. Let's with what Julie McCoy does fixing the lido deck.

Yes NYRA looked to earn ,they have too, there in business to provide profits to give to the State and politician then take the profits and elect not to reinvest them into racing.

[jms62]

Originally Posted by freddymo

Again give the new hire a chance. When fixing an issue you need to hire someone to own the responsibility to make change. First step was done now its up to this person to get money and talent in places that matter. It really wasn't all that bad.

Preakness has a huge infield for the yahoos Belmont doesn't you kind of have to keep perspective in place. The infield plays a major roll in quelling the casual fans appetite for partying without subjecting the more ardent horse players to their brand of entertainment.

No worries... I don't give slack to a new hire who had the ability to query about past failures and make changes. We probably will be in the same situation x Years from now when we have a "New Hire" in place for the next Triple Crown shot.

[freddymo]

Originally Posted by jms62

No worries... I don't give slack to a new hire who had the ability to query about past failures and make changes. We probably will be in the same situation x Years from now when we have a "New Hire" in place for the next Triple Crown shot.

I think she was hired 14 days ago. Have a heart

[jms62]

Originally Posted by freddymo

I think she was hired 14 days ago. Have a heart

So no one that was there 21 days ago gave a **** about fan experience or had the means to explore past failings? Just admit that I made a valid point and we can drop this. NYRA gets a 10 out of 10 for the racing and a 2 out of 10 for fan experience. Hopefully we get a shot at this next year while the "Chief Experience Officer" is in place. The fact that they need this position boggles my mind. I am sure it is a relatively high paid position for a job that should be the number one priority for any business dealing with the public.

[Storm Cadet]

And you know that representatives from the Breeders Cup were in attendance as they usually are! These people are very keen to attendance figures, customer service, concessions and transportation issues.

I would be very surprised if after yesterday what they witnessed in person and have read regarding the post race problems of the fans that we ever see a Breeders Cup in Belmonts future.

[infield_line]

Originally Posted by jms62

Why were there no lessons learned from 2002 and 2008? Let's face it they acted like all business and tried to milk every dollar they could by short staffing knowing that people would continue to come when a triple crown is on the line regardless of their prior experience.

They would have had a 1000% return on investment to hire sufficient staff to service all the thirsty guests.... I can say with some confidence that between placing wagers and trying to get food and fluids, most folks spent over 50% of their day standing in some kind of line, probably more. The persistent long lines also made just getting around a constant battle. At $10 per beer, you would have to sell like 3 additional beers an hour to cover the cost of the lager and an hour's wages plus incidentals.

Refreshment staffing was at least half of what was necessary, so they would have been short without the TC influx. Not rocket scientists making these decisions......

I couldnt tell but was the infield open at Belmont? Pimlico sure does and that probably helps spreading out the crowed instead of packing them in one spot

Originally Posted by freddymo

You are looking for a huge amount of qualified day workers and then have to train them in 10 days. Let's with what Julie McCoy does fixing the lido deck.

Yes NYRA looked to earn ,they have too, there in business to provide profits to give to the State and politician then take the profits and elect not to reinvest them into racing.

Belmont doesnt need to hire extra staff. There are companies like Sodexho u can hire that bring in thier own trained staff and thier own equipment. Hire them for one day and they can be gone the next.

[tanner12oz]

Originally Posted by helicopter11

I couldnt tell but was the infield open at Belmont? Pimlico sure does and that probably helps spreading out the crowed instead of packing them in one spot

no but Belmont does have the outdoor picnic area which pimlico does not have

[Linny]

Many regular Belmont attendees were surprised to see than $30 General Admission to the clubhouse got them no access to the track. A private party closed the clubhouse first floor simulcast room and created the oddity of very few people on the apron on that side of the tunnel.
The track has a history of GA offering generous access and several friends were upset that they never saw an actual race. Another went up to the second floor and blithely walked past the curtains and found a high top near the windows behind the reserved seats and stayed there all day. Clearly the crowd management wasn't very good.

Food service was dreadful. Before the Phipps, I waited 10 minutes for a snack on the patio near the paddock, only to be told that they had no food. After the race I went upstairs to the "café" area which had no coffee. (Just as well due to bathroom lines.) There were two lines and each had the "menu" posted on the wall behind the cashiers. I chose a line and waited 10 minutes when there were 3 people in front of me. I was told that if I wanted a pretzel I had to go to the other line! There were 7 or 8 people in line for hotdogs and pretzels. It took until post time for the Just a Game. The woman in front of me ordered 2 hotdogs, two pretzels and 2 sodas at 7 minutes to post. At 1 minute to post the order was complete, but wait! He accidentally gave her three pretzels and was flummoxed! Give it to me! I tossed the money over the woman's shoulder and ran to watch my P3 go down in flames by a nose. It was awful.

I left the clubhouse at 9. My friends had taken the LIRR and headed off the other direction from me. They live in PA but were staying over in Jersey. I had offered them a ride to NJ but they declined. Halfway to my car they called. Can I get them to Jamaica? Sure, I innocently said. Luckily, we stopped in the Morning Line on the backstretch to eat. At almost 10pm, it took us 10 minutes to exit the barn area onto Hempstead Tpke. It was another 20 minutes before were crossed the Cross Cty. Then were were rolling. It helped me as I was able to hop on the Van Wyck and didn't see any more of the fiasco.

I don't hold NYRA accountable for the LIRR mess. They experienced the mess with Funny Cide and Smarty and Big Brown but didn't fix it. The food service company was a disaster. I watched a supervisor scream at two young women who were actually trying to hustle because they hadn't refilled the supply of chips. For God's sake, let them serve the beer and keep the lines moving. Again this is a contracted group, not NYRA, but they need to know how bad it was. It's not that hard to get extra help for the day.

Bringing in porta potties for the day would help. I know that they are unsightly but there are fairly nice ones available.
Asking a couple of 100 pound 25 year old women to manage the reserved seating area where I was, was a fail. The aisleway stairs filled with a crush of people and those who paid $200 for reserved seats had to battle through to get to them after going to bet.

On the plus side, the racing was great. The place didn't feel as mobbed as it sometimes does. I used my NYRA card and had no issues with machines or lines to bet. My friend who uses cash had no issues as many people have been weaned onto vouchers or cards or accounts.

[Stickhorse]

Great day of racing which I was happy to see via my computer and TV

Thank you Belmont for you crowd management!

Hopefully you don't wrestle the Breeder's Cup from Santa Anita for a good long time.

Biggest crowd I have encountered at Santa Anita was 60,000 and it did take us 45 minutes to get to the freeway nothing like this nightmare:

http://tracking.si.com/2014/06/07/be...n-parking-lot/

[Sightseek]

Originally Posted by Stickhorse

Great day of racing which I was happy to see via my computer and TV

Thank you Belmont for you crowd management!

Hopefully you don't wrestle the Breeder's Cup from Santa Anita for a good long time.

Biggest crowd I have encountered at Santa Anita was 60,000 and it did take us 45 minutes to get to the freeway nothing like this nightmare:

http://tracking.si.com/2014/06/07/be...n-parking-lot/

The last time Belmont had the BC, it went perfectly smooth. You can't compare a Triple Crown on the line and the BC equally.

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by Sightseek

The last time Belmont had the BC, it went perfectly smooth. You can't compare a Triple Crown on the line and the BC equally.

That's true. I spent three hours in the cluster*ck that was Saturday night, but I was also at the last Breeders' Cup at Belmont and that was a pretty smooth day. Though I drove out with a friend, and we bolted as soon as the Classic was over and were out in five minutes. I don't know what the train situation was like.

If I can continue to vent about the trains this weekend- NYRA is saying the whole thing wasn't their fault it's the LIRR's and the LIRR is saying wah wah wah everyone wanted to leave at the same time wah wah wah.

You know why everyone leaves at the same time, LIRR? Because you don't give out a schedule of when trains are departing; you just say you're running them until 9, which gets everyone panicked about making sure they're out by then. If you would actually schedule them, the same way you schedule the out bound trains in the morning/afternoon, and schedule them until 10, there'd probably be less of a huge pileup of people between 7 and 8.

And NYRA, you could help by keeping betting windows open and food concessions running for awhile after the last race so people are tempted to stay a bit longer. I'd much rather sit, eat something and continue to lose money betting on other tracks for a couple of hours than stand for the same amount of time in the dark and the humidity, hungry and thirsty because the lines were too long earlier in the day to get anything to eat.

[tanner12oz]

another good one was having all of the portajohns banded shut on Friday..after being stuck in NYC traffic for 3 freaking hours I had to piss like crazy when we pulled in...I saw an oasis of portajohns in the lots and made a beeline for them...my oasis of toilets turned into a mirage when they were all sealed with zip ties...I ended up going behind the public toilets in the middle of the parking lot...

[GenuineRisk]

Forbes has a good article about the customer service issues:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/teresage.../1752-1784-504

(The link is going to scroll down to a comment, but scroll back up for the article)

I hadn't even thought about the cell phone signal because I'm accustomed to the cell phone signal at Belmont always being crappy.

[Linny]

Lack of lighting in parking lots was a mess. The place is usually closed well before sundown but when the last race was ending as the sun was setting there was no hope of everyone getting out before dark. Non regulars and even those used to parking in other lots were out there for hours.

When I was on Hempstead Tpke at about 10pm, there were people all over the place. One guy approached every car with "livery" or taxi plates. He and his friend were dressed up nicely, probably escapees from the LIRR who were stranded. I got the impression that Nassau Cty police had lost control of the traffic.

I read a TDN blog mentioning trying to attract new fans with great stakes racing but to the uninitiated, the difference between Close Hatches and Princess of Sylmar and a pair of 10k claimers is non existent. Meanwhile they bring in newbies and the trash barrels are over run by 2pm, the bathroom lines are eternal, the food lines are worse and then you discover that there is no food.

Regarding trash, I have one bit of free advice: Place big plastic filled boxes about for recyclable bottles and cans only. Enterprising people will (as they do nightly at Saratoga) gather them up for return. If the gathering had gone on during raceday the place would have been tidier and the trash cans which were mainly filled with bottles and cans would have been available for real trash.

[PatCummings]

You would think that with the average Saturday at Belmont getting 50,000 people, it would be really simple to handle double the crowd once every few years.

Or not.

They better expand that press box to keep the savages from killing each other because they just can't hold as many writers as they should. Tables were stacked tighter than anything I'd seen before. And there was at least almost one fight that I witnessed...cooler heads prevailed (all sarcasm aside - this really happened).

It's worth noting that the same crowding you may have experienced in some parts of the track was similar to some in the press box.

I get it - we want people to have the best experience possible at the races. What would everyone have been saying if California Chrome had won and they still had to deal with these issues? 100,000 on site, but revisionist history would have 300,000 saying they were there to witness it (and happily deal with the headaches).

If NYRA makes wholesale changes to refurb Belmont to be able to better handle a Triple Crown chance - guess what - the full exec team should be fired.

Surely, there are small things that could be done to increase some comforts, but whining about a singular experience is like being in the middle of a forest and standing right in front of one tree and complaining about the fact that this single tree is in your way. Step back and look at the big picture and just think about it all for a few minutes.

As the progressive racing entrepreneur Andrew Rideout @thoroughbredAR tweeted this weekend -

"Nobody comes racing. Empty grandstands. The sport is dying"
"Too many people here. OMG. Stop everything. The sport is dying"
See a pattern?

[jms62]

Originally Posted by PatCummings

You would think that with the average Saturday at Belmont getting 50,000 people, it would be really simple to handle double the crowd once every few years.

Or not.

They better expand that press box to keep the savages from killing each other because they just can't hold as many writers as they should. Tables were stacked tighter than anything I'd seen before. And there was at least almost one fight that I witnessed...cooler heads prevailed (all sarcasm aside - this really happened).

It's worth noting that the same crowding you may have experienced in some parts of the track was similar to some in the press box.

I get it - we want people to have the best experience possible at the races. What would everyone have been saying if California Chrome had won and they still had to deal with these issues? 100,000 on site, but revisionist history would have 300,000 saying they were there to witness it (and happily deal with the headaches).

If NYRA makes wholesale changes to refurb Belmont to be able to better handle a Triple Crown chance - guess what - the full exec team should be fired.

Surely, there are small things that could be done to increase some comforts, but whining about a singular experience is like being in the middle of a forest and standing right in front of one tree and complaining about the fact that this single tree is in your way. Step back and look at the big picture and just think about it all for a few minutes.

As the progressive racing entrepreneur Andrew Rideout @thoroughbredAR tweeted this weekend -

"Nobody comes racing. Empty grandstands. The sport is dying"
"Too many people here. OMG. Stop everything. The sport is dying"
See a pattern?

I do see the pattern that someone from the racing industry is blaming the customer when they complain about the expierence. Happens all the time. No changes just excuses and blaming the victim.

[Kasept]

Feel badly for anyone that had a negative experience. I've been through every side of these days in racing attending more than 60 Crown events as a patron, foodservice vendor and media member. I've also been to Daytonas (and most of the stock car tracks), World Series, NCAA's, Stanley Cups, Eagles games (14 year season ticket holder at the Vet). Mostly good experiences. Several bad. A few scary.

I remember post-Smarty Jones being really rough. Got soaked in the teeming rain while stranded in the Blue lot and then the impossible trickle out to Plainfield Ave. Didn't get to Valley Stream (5 miles away) until 11:00 or so. Even on non-TC years, when involved on LIRR, the trains out were hit or miss. Some year better than others.

Tina and I stayed late in the building -- till about 9:30 -- and there was some residual backup out of the Blue lot. The infrastructure for egress from arenas/venues is terrible in many places. Anyone who has ever been to Foxboro can identify. I can also recall a scary subway platform crowding experience leaving Yankee Stadium after a Series game in 1978. I spilled out onto St. Catherine St. after the Canadians won the Cup in '93 and experienced the riot.

As for the experiences in-track, I guess when you've been to 25 Belmonts, including 10 as a vendor serving the public non-stop for 7+ hours, you know what to expect in terms of the difficulties. It's very rare that any venue handles that many without struggle. Some of the missed executions are 100% repairable and others are not when you get 100,000 there.

Most of the voiced frustrations are very understandable and will undoubtedly be addressed for requisite improvement. Some -- like the blog entry decrying $5 pretzels, brusque patrons and cigar smoke -- are less of a concern. You have a difficult balance to strike in terms of giving everyone an opportunity to come ($10 general admission) and pricing the place so that you can better manage a smaller turnout.