Overcrowding in the new arena was one issue but not a major one...
These are the ones I have heard so far:
1. Ran out of medals for the athletes
2. Place a 2nd place team first and a first place team second
3. Placed a 3rd place team fifth
4. Not fixing placements after mistakes were realized
5. Only one exit and entrance to the arena that didn't require readmission to WWOS.
6. Feeds that went out
The arena worked fine for Worlds when it was 1 floor, but it did not seem to handle the workload well at all when it was 3 (+1 for reveals/awards). My non-professional opinion is that there were a few major flaws with the new arena:
1.
All convenient entrances/exits dumped into a single small area that was shared with the park entrance, the pro shop, the waiting area for teams prior to warmup, and parents waiting for athletes after performance. This was a huge bottleneck the whole weekend. It seems like a MASSIVE fail of designing traffic flow. It got worse when it rained, but it was going to be an issue regardless. I simply cannot understand why they didn't see this coming and I don't see how they are going to fix it.
2.
Audio isolation was terrible. The sound heavily bled into other floors, so they had to keep routine music at low level. I hate how loud music is usually played at every other event, but this was way too far the other way. Athletes could mostly hear their music, but it was far softer than many of them practice to. I didn't see any stage monitors - the only speakers seemed to be high, far from the floor, and poorly aimed.
3.
"Backstage" area was way too crowded. The little hallways between venues were too small and teams had no quiet, private space to pray/chat/talk like they do at every other event. They had to constantly tell teams to move out of the way to leave enough room to walk. It messed with the "vibe" prior to performances.
4.
Divided floors left too little spectator room. The Worlds setup was a big improvement over the previous years, but still wasn't really large enough for the peak crowds. They will still have to divide up the popular divisions to make it work. Split into 4 floors, anything more than a medium crowd wouldn't fit. I was expecting far more seating overall.
5. (minor)
The "push play" area was too far away, but the coaches were too close/constrained overall. Staff had to remain seated and were too close to get an overall view of the routines.
6. (minor)
Confusion/
Lack of signage telling you which floor was which. (backstage area) They get "cool" points I guess for the colored tape and colored lights for the sign, but there was blue tape for two of the arenas, and all of the information used "North, South, East, West". You can keep all of that, just please put some signs that say "North", "South", etc. You could see many people in the middle trying to orient themselves, use their mental maps, come up with memory tricks to remember the color/direction breakdown, or even breaking out the compass app on their phones, but signs would have been a ton easier.
It appears as though it was designed to be swapped between 1, 2, or 4 floor setups. It was OK for 1, and bad for 4. It doesn't look like 4 is going to work without some serious changes. That leaves 1 or 2 - and if it was going to be 1 or 2 floors, it seems like there would have been better designs.
Positives:
1. Sight lines were pretty good for most of the spectators.
2. Warmup rooms were well-designed and safe.
3. Concessions seemed better setup than usual.
4. It was fairly easy to move from floor to floor for spectators and staff.
5. Everything felt new and clean.
Having the new arena is better than not having it, and I'm sure it will get better as they experiment with different setups, but I was disappointed overall given how much hype they had put in to it.
