[Mine Explorer]

Originally Posted by International Steam

The family next to me outside the beer tent had taken two and a half hours to get in, presumably that was a common experience for those arriving at the same time as them.

I'm afraid I couldn't comment on the delays for visitors to get on site, but from what I've heard nothing would surprise me. The queues have been horrendous for years, but I'm afraid reports of queues of over 3 hours for exhibitors to leave the site on the Monday night are just plain rubbish - I do have experience of that. The rally doesn't finish until 5pm, so clearly no exhibitors would dream of trying to leave before then, and the queues had all vanished before 8pm - I drove out myself at 7:30pm with nothing in front of me at all.

THE WEBSITE IS PATHETIC, I can't even find the rally opening and closing times on it, I found 09.30 on a general visitor attraction site using Google. It looks to me as if all that has been done to it this year apart from adding the online ticketing is change the dates. No mention of special attractions like the Tanner Reunion.

I'm slightly surprised by this comment, the website was totally redone at the end of July and although I accept the point that the Tanner Reunion wasn't mentioned (at the point I was involved in giving feedback on it I wasn't aware of the reunion myself - a bit of a vicious circle that one I suppose! lol). However, rally opening times were readily available on there.

The front home page only gives the rally dates, the gate opening time is shown on both the "About the rally" page and "The Society" pages (in the column on the right hand side). I can't remember if it was also shown on the "Buy Tickets" page as that has now expired and doesn't bring up anything.

Here it is on the right hand side: "Gates Open - 9.15am":




The website even has a copy of the arena timetable to view as well, so visitors can plan when they want to arrive/depart based on arena activities:



The "Where's the rally" page gives a text description of how to get to it, a SatNav postcode location for it, and the obligitory Google Maps map pin view as well.




When I go looking for an event website the only points I'm interested in are

• What date is it?
• Where is the showground located?
• What time does the gate open?
• How much is admission?

All of those key points of information can be found on the Onslow website, if not on the front page then just one click away, and when the site only has 5 pages none of which are nested, it shouldn't take many seconds to tour the whole thing.

Unfortunately there are some events who fail to say when the gate opens or how much the admission is, then have seemingly thousands of pages to wade through before you can say for certain that this key information ain't there!

I assume lack of volunteers is the reason why more ticket selling points are not added.

Is it the same reason why the event is not run over three days like Welland and South Cerney who got good crowds on a Friday this year? Or is the Bank Holiday Saturday traffic even worse?

Personally I have no idea about those details, but I can't see it being a particularly popular suggestion to make the Saturday a rally day as well. The current situation allows exhibitors chance to arrive on site and set up without necessarily needing to book annual holiday entitlement from work, or rush around on the Friday night - especially important if they're coming some distance. The traffic situation into Mid-Wales isn't good all weekend, so adding an extra day wouldn't avoid that. The queues on the A458 further along at Newtown were already backing up a couple of miles at lunch time on Bank Holiday Friday.