phins_4_ever
E12 FH Tailgate Gang
Field is painted, ready for gameday!
Lots of pics from me tomorrow. I opened one of these online photo albums for just that occassion. I am trying to use shutter fly unless someone has a better idea.
JRS/Hard Rock Stadium Renovations, Phase II....
- Thread starter THE OG CANEPHINS
- Start date
Lots of pics from me tomorrow. I opened one of these online photo albums for just that occassion. I am trying to use shutter fly unless someone has a better idea.
https://www.panono.com/p/2ApPpkHRcmN2
Tom Garfinkel @TomGarfinkel 2h2 hours ago
Ready for some football...
Tom Garfinkel @TomGarfinkel 2h2 hours ago
Ready for some football...
Man I hated passing up tickets to tonights game . . . But work is work. Can't wait to see the pics you guys post.
I'm sure they turn it off on game day.
Lame. What could we possibly get from a webcam screenshot that we couldn't get from people posting cell phone pics on social media.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
[video=youtube_share;AxmSrG4Kh0U]https://youtu.be/AxmSrG4Kh0U[/video]
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2011
- Messages
- 30,099
- Reaction score
- 15,369
The NFL is really hardcore about this stuff.
Alex Marvez @alexmarvez 4m4 minutes ago
.@TomGarfinkel says @MiamiDolphins have sold roughly 48K in season-tickets & expect to sell out every home game in 2016 @SiriusXMNFL
Alex Marvez @alexmarvez 1m1 minute ago
.@TomGarfinkel says no plans to move @MiamiDolphins practice facility to Hard Rock Stadium or business side to team's Davie HQ
Alex Marvez Retweeted Tiber
To have everyone under one roof (team/business side) like most NFL franchises.
Tiber @Bannsiders
@alexmarvez why would they move the training facility?
.@TomGarfinkel says @MiamiDolphins have sold roughly 48K in season-tickets & expect to sell out every home game in 2016 @SiriusXMNFL
Alex Marvez @alexmarvez 1m1 minute ago
.@TomGarfinkel says no plans to move @MiamiDolphins practice facility to Hard Rock Stadium or business side to team's Davie HQ
Alex Marvez Retweeted Tiber
To have everyone under one roof (team/business side) like most NFL franchises.
Tiber @Bannsiders
@alexmarvez why would they move the training facility?
[video=youtube_share;m0rs3IZTUQo]https://youtu.be/m0rs3IZTUQo[/video]
[video=youtube_share;mCLEF6HgOJY]https://youtu.be/mCLEF6HgOJY[/video]
[video=youtube_share;mCLEF6HgOJY]https://youtu.be/mCLEF6HgOJY[/video]
phins_4_ever
E12 FH Tailgate Gang
48k? Far cry from what we had in the 90s but much better than in recent years.
I attended the Canes season opener tonight vs. Florida A&M. While everything is fresh in memory I want to post a review of the stadium. This will be lengthy, per norm. There is quite a bit to cover. I was opposed to this patchwork, willing to wait and gamble on a fresh start in a relevant location.
Bottom line, there are problems but overall I was more impressed and satisfied than I expected to be.
Point by point, beginning mostly with the positive stuff:
* The venue now has a presence. Previously it never really stood out, even in a mostly low developed area. Tonight I was stunned at how prominent it looked even when I was relatively far away, still not even close to the Walmart on NW 27th Avenue heading north. The expanse of the roof beyond the former rim and bright white color scheme make it seemingly 50% larger. The pointy towers are not as awkward as I anticipated.
* Naturally the far away promo shots will look great. Sucker material. I ignored them for months and waited for a walk up view in person. I expected the drab areas to continue to dominate the outside view. Not really. They have done a good job of adding just enough color and class to draw the eyes. In particular, I liked the silver lining on the outside of the escalators, announcing the 200 level and 300 level. The silver covers everything and goes all the way up. Those escalators had really shown their age in recent years. Too bad they didn't do something similar with the walk up ramps, which look awful in spots. The outside back of the upper deck also has aged poorly and really contrasts to the sharp white of the new roofing alongside. I don't know why they couldn't have touched that up before adding the roof. Walking around the upper deck it's a weird mixture of new and very old. The old wouldn't be so bad if it had any character.
* Now for a highlight...the stadium is now very, very loud. I judge it by my old Orange Bowl standard -- can you comfortably carry on a conversation with the person next to you? No chance in the Orange Bowl. And I had surprising difficulty tonight, even with a decent crowd by Canes standards but hardly full vs a high profile opponent. It was vastly different than any recent season in the same seats.
The magnificent Orange Bowl design, and metallic foundation, inspired and held the noise, without any help. This stadium needed an artificial boost and now has it. The loudspeakers in the new rooftop are overbearing. It's like when you are in a room of screaming people and have no choice but to scream to be heard. The volume was often ridiculously high and the canopy retains and directs much of it. Fans at those Canes games never react to relatively trivial matters like announcement of the student of the game, or the song leader of the game, or professor of the game, and so forth. The announcement drifts into the wind with barely a clap or notice. I always felt so bad for those people. Tonight with the loudspeaker system blaring everything and the recipient front and center on the four very sharp big screens, there was considerable applause and noise all night. You should have seen the joy on their faces. They had a recent Canes grad who won a silver medal in synchronized diving at Rio. He received a thunderous ovation and actually gave a little impromptu speech. I've never seen anything like that during those time out introductions
* It feels more like an event. I guess that's what I'm saying. The white rooftop provides almost an indoor feel and the volume makes it seem like something important is going on, the place to be. The lighting system is much improved. More people stayed to the end, even in a 70-3 game. My best summary is it felt like an event, not merely a college opener with a 53.5 point spread. Canes cover. On that subject matter I still can't believe Ayana blew the huge lead in the 5000 meters in the Olympics. I targeted her for a full year and won huge when she broke the world record by 14 seconds in the 10,000. Then all I needed was any victory in the 5000 to collect a big prop, wagered months earlier. By race time the books were not even allowing wagers on Ayana to merely win. You could only wager on her at Even money to break the world record. I'm still not over that, not even close, even though this was my best wagering Olympics in a long time, once I wised up and focused almost exclusively on the women's events, with the softer odds.
* Here's the inevitable bad news. As I forecast many times on this site and elsewhere, there was no way the engineers could do anything about the air circulation problems in a situation like this. It wasn't unbearable. It was certainly uncomfortable. Thank goodness my seats are low upper deck and not midway in the lower bowl. I saw people fanning themselves all night in those lower bowl areas. You could look at a block of maybe 20 people in a small area and at least 8 or 10 were fanning themselves. It seemed particularly pronounced in the lower west end zone.
The streamers atop the goal posts never moved all night. Completely limp, all four of them. That was my focal point and it is unbelievable for this stadium, given the prior realities. Normally those streamers are whipping in one direction on one side of the stadium and can be equally violent in the opposite direction on the other side. Last year it was more severe than ever, with the top corner seating removed, creating wonderful swirling breezes. I loved it in the upper deck. Best season ever, from a comfort standpoint. With the current setup, breeze struggles mightily to get to the lower bowl. Kickers no longer have any excuse. There are two large flags in the upper west center of the upper deck, an American flag and State of Florida flag. Midway through the first quarter those two flags were pushed parallel to the playing field. Yet the goal post streamers maybe 50 feet lower weren't detecting anything at all. No corpse has ever been more limp than those streamers.
I was estimating it required three times as much breeze to reach a similar feel to prior year normalcy. There were occasional short breezes in my seating area but this is how bad it got: During the third quarter a short breeze received a mock cheer from nearby fans. I have never experienced that before. A lady said, "Finally." The guy seated directly behind me got up several times to leave his seat and take a walk behind the stands, to get some air. I talked to him about it after the game. He mentioned very early in the game how uncomfortable it was. Only at that time did I speak up, agreeing with him. I had predetermined that I wanted to see how others responded, not to influence anything myself. Once I got up to fill my water bottle at the fountain behind the stands it was startling how normal an evening it was. Plenty of breeze. Only the new design repels the wind.
Keep in mind this was a night game. I'm not looking forward to a midday game, with the sun perhaps not on our backs anymore in those south stands but who knows how much of a slow roast that patchwork roof might provide, with crosswinds thwarted.
That stadium simply wasn't designed with a roof in mind. Inevitable problems in a fully enclosed venue and now a confining roof. The Orange Bowl had the open east side with great breeze. Reference point loud stadiums like the Seahawks' and also the Washington Husky stadium have more vertical seating and terrific retaining structures, but also the huge open areas on the flanks. I have seen those openings described as weakness. Not even close. Necessity. Our stadium should have had more seating removed from the upper deck areas alongside the four video screens, allowing small but meaningful gaps. Instead, Ross got greedy and decided to squeeze small sections in those areas. Fans in those sections were fanning themselves like crazy tonight. I have no idea if the nearby video screens were throwing off any heat. Regardless, those fans can't be getting any swirl, with a wall so closely behind them.
I will say this...for home field impact the opposing sideline will really be feeling it, in a lower bowl without much air circulation and smack in the sun.
* Another problem is the new method of scanning tickets on entry. This is an unforced error, at least as currently applied. Previously you had to remove everything from your pockets and were wanded. They have done away with the wanding. Now you are asked to remove only phones or cameras and place them in a basket. You walk underneath a metal detector. They have also done away with the employees who scan tickets side by side of each other. The tickets are now self scanned maybe 20 feet ahead of the metal detectors and there are no lines or separators of any type leading to the self scanners. It is chaos. At least it was tonight. Nobody knew where they were going. The self scanning machines are too low to be obvious. Everyone was crowding together with massive delay. Once people saw they weren't directly in line with a self scanner they pushed in either direction, taking family members with them and often shoving aside people in their path. It is unbelievable this method of entry was judged ideal. I said out loud, "This is worse than previously." A lady to my right said, "Much worse."
It was bad enough if the self scanners had functioned perfectly. They did not. One ticket after another was rejected, causing entire families to be stuck, and insisting their tickets were valid. I saw problems on either side of where I was. Keep in mind there was a flash heavy rainstorm maybe 40 minutes before kickoff. I had a standard ticket. It scanned quickly the first time. But the family in front of me had printed sheets of paper that were somewhat wet. The scanner refused all of them. A female supervisor had to be summoned. She told the father he would have to take the tickets to the ticket window to be verified. "You've got to be kidding!" I expected profanity. Nope. He walked toward that ticket station with a family of kids in disbelief that they weren't entering the stadium. The supervisor said it so matter of factly it was obvious she had repeated the same instruction countless times already.
* The new video boards are crisp and excellent. Strangely, two of them are equipped with Closed Captions down below while two are not. The northwest and southeast have closed captions. Naturally the canned videos have perfect captioning while the live version is very good but can struggle once in a while. For example, "as" turned into "has" many times. But that's nitpicking. I'm sure many audio challenged spectators appreciate the new touch. Those northwest and southeast boards also have scores of other games on the right side. It is so cramped they use logos and not team names so you have to be familiar. I struggled with Virginia's opponent until I recognized it as a Spider, per Richmond (upset winner). Those logos should be easily recognizable in the pros.
The inner rim of the stadium just above the luxury boxes now is full color animated. Loud colors. Primarily advertising, which is predictable. Previously they featured stats and game scores on that strip. Not so much anymore, which annoyed me. I like to keep track of rushing attempts and similar. It was always right there, and often. Team stats and individual stats. Other scores with specific quarter and time remaining. Now that shows up between the advertising only briefly, and seldom.
* That's about it. Again, my impression was primarily positive, above expectation. I forgot to mention the strange feeling that I was further removed from the action, low upper deck, despite the increased sound level. I spent all night trying to figure that out. It was an inescapable feeling. Maybe the white uppers make the venue itself seem more vast, and therefore anyone relatively near that rooftop is by definition far away.
I didn't mean to spend so much time on the negatives toward finish, but that air circulation issue is not easily solved. Feeling stuffy and sweaty in such close proximity to strangers is hardly ideal
* Definite improvement but I liken it to a processor upgrade card. I fell for that once, during the transition from Power PC to G3. Over priced and only "like new" if you are gullible enough to ignore all the important aspects that can't be fixed, like system bus speed or gently sloped seating in a snooze area of town. No matter where we subjectively slot now in relation to other stadiums, by sheer logic we'll fall rear of truly new structures like Minnesota and Atlanta and Los Angeles and anyplace that follows. Probability wins. It's more like a European soccer stadium, many of which have been similarly patched with new roofs, like the Marseilles stadium that drew some praise during Euro 2016 this summer, or even the Dublin stadium that housed Georgia Tech vs. Boston College on Saturday morning. Favorable ending on that one, BTW.
From my travels the closest spectator experience was when I visited the Munich Olympic Stadium with the weird roof, built for the ill fated Games of 1972.
Bottom line, there are problems but overall I was more impressed and satisfied than I expected to be.
Point by point, beginning mostly with the positive stuff:
* The venue now has a presence. Previously it never really stood out, even in a mostly low developed area. Tonight I was stunned at how prominent it looked even when I was relatively far away, still not even close to the Walmart on NW 27th Avenue heading north. The expanse of the roof beyond the former rim and bright white color scheme make it seemingly 50% larger. The pointy towers are not as awkward as I anticipated.
* Naturally the far away promo shots will look great. Sucker material. I ignored them for months and waited for a walk up view in person. I expected the drab areas to continue to dominate the outside view. Not really. They have done a good job of adding just enough color and class to draw the eyes. In particular, I liked the silver lining on the outside of the escalators, announcing the 200 level and 300 level. The silver covers everything and goes all the way up. Those escalators had really shown their age in recent years. Too bad they didn't do something similar with the walk up ramps, which look awful in spots. The outside back of the upper deck also has aged poorly and really contrasts to the sharp white of the new roofing alongside. I don't know why they couldn't have touched that up before adding the roof. Walking around the upper deck it's a weird mixture of new and very old. The old wouldn't be so bad if it had any character.
* Now for a highlight...the stadium is now very, very loud. I judge it by my old Orange Bowl standard -- can you comfortably carry on a conversation with the person next to you? No chance in the Orange Bowl. And I had surprising difficulty tonight, even with a decent crowd by Canes standards but hardly full vs a high profile opponent. It was vastly different than any recent season in the same seats.
The magnificent Orange Bowl design, and metallic foundation, inspired and held the noise, without any help. This stadium needed an artificial boost and now has it. The loudspeakers in the new rooftop are overbearing. It's like when you are in a room of screaming people and have no choice but to scream to be heard. The volume was often ridiculously high and the canopy retains and directs much of it. Fans at those Canes games never react to relatively trivial matters like announcement of the student of the game, or the song leader of the game, or professor of the game, and so forth. The announcement drifts into the wind with barely a clap or notice. I always felt so bad for those people. Tonight with the loudspeaker system blaring everything and the recipient front and center on the four very sharp big screens, there was considerable applause and noise all night. You should have seen the joy on their faces. They had a recent Canes grad who won a silver medal in synchronized diving at Rio. He received a thunderous ovation and actually gave a little impromptu speech. I've never seen anything like that during those time out introductions
* It feels more like an event. I guess that's what I'm saying. The white rooftop provides almost an indoor feel and the volume makes it seem like something important is going on, the place to be. The lighting system is much improved. More people stayed to the end, even in a 70-3 game. My best summary is it felt like an event, not merely a college opener with a 53.5 point spread. Canes cover. On that subject matter I still can't believe Ayana blew the huge lead in the 5000 meters in the Olympics. I targeted her for a full year and won huge when she broke the world record by 14 seconds in the 10,000. Then all I needed was any victory in the 5000 to collect a big prop, wagered months earlier. By race time the books were not even allowing wagers on Ayana to merely win. You could only wager on her at Even money to break the world record. I'm still not over that, not even close, even though this was my best wagering Olympics in a long time, once I wised up and focused almost exclusively on the women's events, with the softer odds.
* Here's the inevitable bad news. As I forecast many times on this site and elsewhere, there was no way the engineers could do anything about the air circulation problems in a situation like this. It wasn't unbearable. It was certainly uncomfortable. Thank goodness my seats are low upper deck and not midway in the lower bowl. I saw people fanning themselves all night in those lower bowl areas. You could look at a block of maybe 20 people in a small area and at least 8 or 10 were fanning themselves. It seemed particularly pronounced in the lower west end zone.
The streamers atop the goal posts never moved all night. Completely limp, all four of them. That was my focal point and it is unbelievable for this stadium, given the prior realities. Normally those streamers are whipping in one direction on one side of the stadium and can be equally violent in the opposite direction on the other side. Last year it was more severe than ever, with the top corner seating removed, creating wonderful swirling breezes. I loved it in the upper deck. Best season ever, from a comfort standpoint. With the current setup, breeze struggles mightily to get to the lower bowl. Kickers no longer have any excuse. There are two large flags in the upper west center of the upper deck, an American flag and State of Florida flag. Midway through the first quarter those two flags were pushed parallel to the playing field. Yet the goal post streamers maybe 50 feet lower weren't detecting anything at all. No corpse has ever been more limp than those streamers.
I was estimating it required three times as much breeze to reach a similar feel to prior year normalcy. There were occasional short breezes in my seating area but this is how bad it got: During the third quarter a short breeze received a mock cheer from nearby fans. I have never experienced that before. A lady said, "Finally." The guy seated directly behind me got up several times to leave his seat and take a walk behind the stands, to get some air. I talked to him about it after the game. He mentioned very early in the game how uncomfortable it was. Only at that time did I speak up, agreeing with him. I had predetermined that I wanted to see how others responded, not to influence anything myself. Once I got up to fill my water bottle at the fountain behind the stands it was startling how normal an evening it was. Plenty of breeze. Only the new design repels the wind.
Keep in mind this was a night game. I'm not looking forward to a midday game, with the sun perhaps not on our backs anymore in those south stands but who knows how much of a slow roast that patchwork roof might provide, with crosswinds thwarted.
That stadium simply wasn't designed with a roof in mind. Inevitable problems in a fully enclosed venue and now a confining roof. The Orange Bowl had the open east side with great breeze. Reference point loud stadiums like the Seahawks' and also the Washington Husky stadium have more vertical seating and terrific retaining structures, but also the huge open areas on the flanks. I have seen those openings described as weakness. Not even close. Necessity. Our stadium should have had more seating removed from the upper deck areas alongside the four video screens, allowing small but meaningful gaps. Instead, Ross got greedy and decided to squeeze small sections in those areas. Fans in those sections were fanning themselves like crazy tonight. I have no idea if the nearby video screens were throwing off any heat. Regardless, those fans can't be getting any swirl, with a wall so closely behind them.
I will say this...for home field impact the opposing sideline will really be feeling it, in a lower bowl without much air circulation and smack in the sun.
* Another problem is the new method of scanning tickets on entry. This is an unforced error, at least as currently applied. Previously you had to remove everything from your pockets and were wanded. They have done away with the wanding. Now you are asked to remove only phones or cameras and place them in a basket. You walk underneath a metal detector. They have also done away with the employees who scan tickets side by side of each other. The tickets are now self scanned maybe 20 feet ahead of the metal detectors and there are no lines or separators of any type leading to the self scanners. It is chaos. At least it was tonight. Nobody knew where they were going. The self scanning machines are too low to be obvious. Everyone was crowding together with massive delay. Once people saw they weren't directly in line with a self scanner they pushed in either direction, taking family members with them and often shoving aside people in their path. It is unbelievable this method of entry was judged ideal. I said out loud, "This is worse than previously." A lady to my right said, "Much worse."
It was bad enough if the self scanners had functioned perfectly. They did not. One ticket after another was rejected, causing entire families to be stuck, and insisting their tickets were valid. I saw problems on either side of where I was. Keep in mind there was a flash heavy rainstorm maybe 40 minutes before kickoff. I had a standard ticket. It scanned quickly the first time. But the family in front of me had printed sheets of paper that were somewhat wet. The scanner refused all of them. A female supervisor had to be summoned. She told the father he would have to take the tickets to the ticket window to be verified. "You've got to be kidding!" I expected profanity. Nope. He walked toward that ticket station with a family of kids in disbelief that they weren't entering the stadium. The supervisor said it so matter of factly it was obvious she had repeated the same instruction countless times already.
* The new video boards are crisp and excellent. Strangely, two of them are equipped with Closed Captions down below while two are not. The northwest and southeast have closed captions. Naturally the canned videos have perfect captioning while the live version is very good but can struggle once in a while. For example, "as" turned into "has" many times. But that's nitpicking. I'm sure many audio challenged spectators appreciate the new touch. Those northwest and southeast boards also have scores of other games on the right side. It is so cramped they use logos and not team names so you have to be familiar. I struggled with Virginia's opponent until I recognized it as a Spider, per Richmond (upset winner). Those logos should be easily recognizable in the pros.
The inner rim of the stadium just above the luxury boxes now is full color animated. Loud colors. Primarily advertising, which is predictable. Previously they featured stats and game scores on that strip. Not so much anymore, which annoyed me. I like to keep track of rushing attempts and similar. It was always right there, and often. Team stats and individual stats. Other scores with specific quarter and time remaining. Now that shows up between the advertising only briefly, and seldom.
* That's about it. Again, my impression was primarily positive, above expectation. I forgot to mention the strange feeling that I was further removed from the action, low upper deck, despite the increased sound level. I spent all night trying to figure that out. It was an inescapable feeling. Maybe the white uppers make the venue itself seem more vast, and therefore anyone relatively near that rooftop is by definition far away.
I didn't mean to spend so much time on the negatives toward finish, but that air circulation issue is not easily solved. Feeling stuffy and sweaty in such close proximity to strangers is hardly ideal
* Definite improvement but I liken it to a processor upgrade card. I fell for that once, during the transition from Power PC to G3. Over priced and only "like new" if you are gullible enough to ignore all the important aspects that can't be fixed, like system bus speed or gently sloped seating in a snooze area of town. No matter where we subjectively slot now in relation to other stadiums, by sheer logic we'll fall rear of truly new structures like Minnesota and Atlanta and Los Angeles and anyplace that follows. Probability wins. It's more like a European soccer stadium, many of which have been similarly patched with new roofs, like the Marseilles stadium that drew some praise during Euro 2016 this summer, or even the Dublin stadium that housed Georgia Tech vs. Boston College on Saturday morning. Favorable ending on that one, BTW.
From my travels the closest spectator experience was when I visited the Munich Olympic Stadium with the weird roof, built for the ill fated Games of 1972.
Last edited by a moderator:
Good review.
That lingering heat was probably not something they could envision when designing. Some well placed large exhaust fans could probably eliminate that stale air. It's probably going to take a lot of complaints for them to take action though. I'll be sitting in that lower level area you mentioned for the home opener, so I guess I will get feel of it.
That lingering heat was probably not something they could envision when designing. Some well placed large exhaust fans could probably eliminate that stale air. It's probably going to take a lot of complaints for them to take action though. I'll be sitting in that lower level area you mentioned for the home opener, so I guess I will get feel of it.
