Portugal Convention: is everyone insane?
So most of this information I've gotten through my mother...
Whoever is putting together the conventions in Portugal, are people going out of their mind?
Long story short, they're going to be, country wide, on the same day. Previously you'd have several throughout the country, scattered enough so that people could attend by taking a bus ride of a couple of hours daily. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but say one or two around Lisbon, one in the north, another in upper-Alentejo and one in the Algarve. It's not a big country but at least it was cut out in a way that attendance wasn't insane in some places.
Now, some genius, thought of putting it all in the same date, cut down to 3 venues (see in an area where you'd have a tops 3000 people venue, it's not going to +5000) and a large chunk of the program isn't even happening live, it's going to be transmitted from Porto (I believe).
Not only that, but apparently there's not going to be any 'elderly' seating areas and the brothers there are the ones who will choose your seat for you on arrival.
This is hell for someone who had to attend only to take care of their PIMI elder parents with significant health issues because you just know it's going to be a hassle to get them seated in an area that is close enough to an exit because they constantly need to go to the bathroom for health reasons and because half of the time. I know how much of a hell it was before because, despite my mom's health and age, she looks quite well. I can't tell you how many times she actually had verbal fights with the seating brothers because of this shit.
The space these conventions are happening doesn't have enough facilities to accommodate all these people. And if you're gonna transmit the program from somewhere else to begin with, why cut the number of locations?
Honestly, I'm super glad I'm not attending this year because of my family's health. The travel time was always horrific in the summer, we'd have to get up super early, arrive around 14 hours later back home and rinse and repeat for 3 days.
P.s.: because of coinciding events in Porto (events that gather thousands of people, hinder traffic and happen every single year btw), everyone else has to wait an extra hour for the program to start countrywide. But arrival time and door opening time slots haven't changed. Just sit there for an extra hour waiting for the big screen transmission to start.