- The building is enormous. If all you are doing is just "get to the concourse, walk around until you find your section, sit down", then it feels more or less like most arenas. But there is a LOT to it. Like 7 floors, tons of clubs, restaurants, etc. etc. They had told us, "If doors are open, you can go there". Based on this logic, my friend and I were briefly on the roof of the building LOL Just huge
- The seats for most of the arena are quite nice. Roomy and comfortable.
- The upper deck is steep. If you've been to the tank for Sharks games, I think it might actually be steeper. Standing up high in the upper deck was a bit dizzying.
- The jumbotron is absolutely ridiculous. It is enormous, but manages not to block any view in the arena that we found, while also giving a good jumbotron view to anyone in the arena. If you're sitting down really low on the sides, for example, and it would normally be difficult to look straight up at the screens on the sides, there are other (very large, just not impossibly huge) screens *on the inside of the jumbotron*. So you can look at the screen on the inside of the far side of the jumbotron. With that much real estate, aside from just showing the game well, there was room for tons of stats. I used to always complain that they didn't show turnovers anywhere in the arena for a reality check when the team was getting sloppy. The new screen shows turnovers. And points off turnovers. And points in the paint. And etc. etc.
- Food seemed pretty high quality. Didn't see a *ton* of variety, but there were multiple instances of 7 or 8 restaurants that looked pretty good. In an interesting development, for the soda drinkers in the crowd, they sell fountain drinks with free refills. So there are fountain dispensers scattered around on the concourse.
- We briefly ducked into a suite. It was appropriate decadent. Lots of couches, buffets, TV's, and 24 (I think) seats per suite.
- There were also (I think they were called) theater boxes. This looked kinda like a club or restaurant with a buffet that led out into boxes with two seats. The seats were leather armchairs with a shelf in front for food. A bit farther than I'd normally like to be from the game, but not too far. A pretty sweet setup, all in all.
- The one major disappointment we saw, which we found funny, is the *really good seats*. If you sit in the sideline club a few rows off the floor, we noticed a few things. The chairs are flimsy. Much more like sitting in a folding chair than our seats. There is almost no leg room; we had my friend sit down and I pretended I needed to get past him to get to my seat. It was... very intimate. And we tested this because some of the rows have... I dunno... 40? seats? So if you sit on the end of one of those rows, heaven help you. Like 20 people are going to need to squeeeeeze past you to get to their seats. There may be an uprising heh
- There is a spot waaaay up in the upper deck where there is what looks like tickets in a restaurant. And that spot has a great view of the banners
- We drove to the event, and it was a total mess. And I'm pretty sure there weren't 18,000 people at the event. If the only point of this event was to encourage people not to drive to games, they may well have accomplished their mission. I can't even imagine.
All in all, it is quite a spectacle. Before we left, we looked to see how far out All Star Weekends are booked. I believe we found 2023 is the next available, and I'd bet a decent amount it ends up in SF.
