please empty your brain below

Lots of people in the Olympic Park who have come along who are probably not really interested in the sports but wanting to say, "I've been in the park" and take their photos to show their friends. Many people leaving by 9pm to get home at a reasonable hour and hopefully get a seat on the tube.
The trade exhibitors in the park like Panasonic E.D.F.and BP still have people queuing, which again makes me think many people just want to be in the park, and even if they have a booked stadium seat, do not want to spend 3+ hours in there. The medal ceremonies take up a fair bit of time too.
Makes me think of the Festival of Britain, once it shuts its gone, so go now or miss it forever.
Although we were left with the Festival Hall and the Olympics park will leave us the Orbit and a few sports venues.
Darryl at the 853 blog put something up about the dressage yesterday including

They are not being pre-sold online as Greenwich Council has apparently put a block on the no of tickets sold, as believe with schools going back, that local transport would not be able to cope. That was the reason given to me by an official at ticketing at the venue today.

Quite what authority Greenwich council have I'm not sure....
...but the dressage ended yesterday, and schools in Greenwich only went back yesterday, so the council's excuse is ludicrous.
Aquatic Centre packed at the start on Sunday night, apart from seats with orange or blue edges (wonder who they're for as athletes were in a different block?). Five victory ceremonies on the trot at the end with no GB interest maybe caused the exodus. We did have a re-race with one swimmer only; half people had left before that (to be fair they may not have heard on the tannoy that it was coming) but we still cheered the lone swimmer on!
I was at the athletics on Saturday and was shocked how many people left early once Oscar had run. However I was pleased in a way as that meant the station wouldn't be crowded when I stayed to the end. Whilst the transport has generally been great 80,000 all trying to get into the station at the same time does slow down your journey home.
I have been disappointed about the information available on the day - the programme is just a glossy magazine and doesn't give me the info I want on what the actual events are and who is participating. I have to print off what I want from the web site before I go.
It wasn't just at the Paralympics that people have left early. Even during the Olympics loads of people left the Stadium well before the end on the Wednesday - both morning (during the decathlon) and evening (after the track events). Maybe because there were no more Brits to compete. Or maybe they just wanted to be able to say that they had been to the Stadium, but weren't really interested in watching athletics.
On Saturday the athletics programme was running quite late - probably by half and hour - so whilst there was a mass exodous it was around the time the evening should have finished.

Quite a lot of people leaving had young children and understandably needed to get them home.
If you print your tickets at home/collect from the box office you don't get a spectator guide and the velodrome in particular is quite a trek from Stratford Gate. Also most people slowly meander around the park, stopping to look at the buildings and take photos so it takes a lot longer to get around than usual.

I find the official London 2012 "Get Involved" app very useful for listing the time of each event.
The fact that there's wifi in the park is great, so I'm using the Ch4 app and the London2012 app to give me schedules.
Yesterday I had an Olympic Park Pass. Went to the tennis at Eton Manor. The first Centre Court match had only 200 people there (it had been allocated to the number 1 seed) but the Court No 1 was packed as it had a GB player. I hope dg enjoys the Carol Anne Duffy mural at Eton Manor when he finally gets to the far north of the park.
Even using the official app, it's a bit hard to tell when a session goes on till, just when the last event of the session starts.

I was at the Athletics yesterday morning, and the place was noticeably emptier during the third hour - particularly in the north stand, which had been in direct sunlight for the whole morning, and was probably uncomfortably hot.

The park was, as they say in Scotland, hoaching yesterday lunchtime, so I guess the people who'd been in the stadium just wanted to go for a wander.
I would say that the paralympics has a higher proportion of familes with children the olympics, so early exits are more likely
It's a shame people are leaving early. I stayed right to the end when watching the Athletics at the Olympics. I had expected there to be transport problems with so many people leaving at once but in reality had very little problem - well done to the organisers! Leaving early is not only direspectful it is anti-social as everyone else in the row has to get up to let the people leaving get past disrupting their viewing and that of the people in the row behind.
Tried to get tickets to take the eldest child, but no joy.

I think the points about kids above are very valid. Not so much a 'tired' thing, but mine would have loved it, cheered on the athletes, been excited when we won, asked all sorts of questions about the rules, the wheelchairs and the man who starts the races - but would also have had a limited attention span and I suspect wouldn't have made it to the end.

Parenting is full of dilemmas, and one of them is when to quit whilst you're ahead, especially when you're conscious of other people's enjoyment. Inconveniencing people to leave (as per Jon's comment) versus staying on with a fidgety, bored, talking-during-the-important-announcements, messing-around inconveniencing machine.
We went to the athletics last night, yelled home David Weir in the 1500m, stayed to the very end to see result of the Women's F57 Discus and were disappointed when it was time to go home.We'd had such a brilliant day that we wanted to stay and carry on drinking in the atmosphere
I'm sure the London 2012 'Join In' app has all the schedules. But it's not much use if you don't have a smartphone. And it's only useful if you've thought to download the app, and thought to check the schedules.

I saw plenty of spectators using the app at the Olympics. I haven't seen one using it at the Paralympics.
Athens: 200,000 against a target of 400,00 tickets sold.

Beijing: 140,000 tickets sold despite 1.4Bn Chinese (20M in Beijing)

London: 2.4M tickets sold.

That's the story.
London Paralympic sales have been amazing, but no need to exaggerate. By the opening ceremony, Athens managed about 450,000 and Beijing 1.2 million. London still doubled Beijing's numbers, which are nowhere near as bad as that.
My research (ok, clicking around the Internet looking for what happened in Athens) was carried out rather late last night, but what I found certainly seemed to indicate that Athens brought the number up from 200,000 by giving away tickets to schools and anyone who might turn up, which is why I added "sold". The China stat came from a conversation with a Gamesmaker, and matches what I had heard previously about the way the Chinese filled seats busing people in.

A little more clicking (http://en.paralympic.beijing2008.cn/tickets/paralympic-tickets/n214576761.shtml) gives the official China version of 408K sales.

Happy to be corrected, but whichever way you look at it, there is an order of magnitude difference, and that should be the story.
When a friend emailed LOCOG about the dressage being rather empty, we were given a fairly vague reply to do with being able to clear the venue in time - which I guess fits in with not having enough staff, and/or Greenwich Council's worries.

Worse though - on Sunday afternoon at Greenwich there were 1000 tickets available at the venue box office, despite the event being sold out online. We only found this out after cheekily asking if we could stay for the afternoon session having been for the morning. The games maker seemed rather apologetic that we'd be unable to get the tickets without having to nip outside and queue up again!
I took my young children (3 yr old and 1) to the paralympics athletics yesterday. I didn't try to take them to the Olympics because it was an awful lot of money and stress when they were likely to get bored/hungry/tired before the end.

As it turned out I had to spend the first 45 minutes trying to find a buggy park outside the stadium that wasn't full (they seemed totally unprepared for lots of families going) and we had to leave well before the end.

So my seat was empty for most of the session, but my 3 year old really enjoyed himself.
We went to the Paralympic's Athletics on Wednesday - morning session. It was annoying not knowing what was on next, and I confess we left before the very end of of the session as the commentator said 'last contestant in shotput 3 throws left' and it was difficult to see the event even though we had binoculars and sitting on the east side.

We had a great time, although we travelled 200 miles each way, 2 nights in a hotel, plus the coach fares. Not all of us live in London...

The park was packed, huge, very sunny, and fantastic. I like basketball and have been following Paralympic basketball for some year - but couldn't get tickets, so grabbed what I could, given having to book transport etc in advance.

People will leave early in evening sessions. Where we used to live in Kent the last train from London is 23:00 from London Bridge. If I had kids as well I'd make very sure we made the train ....
Athletics as a sport, from the bottom up, is not spectator-friendly so its hardly surprising it was difficult to know what is or will be happening.

As a Charlton Athletic supporter, nothing will ever surprise me where Greenwich Council and health & safety are concerned. If they can make it difficult for you, they will!!!

I was at the Athletics on Sunday evening and a large proportion of those that left after 'Oscar' did not have small children. I guess these are the same people that leave football matches 10 minutes early just to be the crowds. I just don't get it.










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