Parklife

I'm just back from my first trip to the fully-opened Olympic Park.  I was there for today's Diving & Swimming finals, and I'll post a different blog entry tomorrow with my event reports.  This post will concentrate on my observations of the Park itself.

Overall it was a very positive experience.  Everything seemed to be working in the way it was set up to work.  The gamesmakers who are working on the site truly are amongst the most customer-friendly event staff I've ever met at any event, and of course are mostly doing all of this for free.

As for queues for security, we were told to expect queues in the region of 90 minutes, but today it took just 10 minutes, despite arriving at a comparatively peak time.  And as for food, there is way more to choose from that just McDonalds - there is a wide range of food outlets - Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and many others.

Here are some photos I took today, of the Olympic venues:

And now, some other pictures from the Olympic Park, starting with a shot of the Olympic Village:

One last comment for tonight, on the hot topic of the empty seats at venues.  It was very noticeable during this evening's Swimming finals that there were large blocks of empty seats.  These weren't in the Athletes area, or Media area, of Sponors area, and they weren't just 2 or 3 people who had to pull out for illness or travel problems - there was a block close to me of 20 to 30 adjacent empty seats.

Seb Coe is an ex-politician, so is well versed in spin, as to offering the public unlikely excuses for the empty seats.  I'm not a politician and can offer up a good reason for the empty seats... these seats were tied into corporate hospitality packages... something where you can buy a £50 seat, so long as you buy a £750 hotel room along with it.  These offers were not generally taken up by the public - due to the abundance of affordable tickets available elsewhere - and the seats, quite simply, remained unsold.  I haven't read any of the press today, so don't know it what light this topic is now being reported, but from what I have seen in recent weeks and months on ticketing websites, what I say above is by far the most plausible explanation for the empty seats...

Anyway, another post will follow in the morning...