Long Lines at Wembley.

My first time going to an Olympic event, I went to see North Korea V Gabon at Wembley Stadium.  The total attendance for the match was about 76,000 and the theme of the match was lines, lines, and more lines.  The lines for women to get in to the stadium were long because there is a separate queue for women with bags (and of course they all bring bags).  Also only female security guards are allowed to search females so the male security guards couldn’t speed the process along.  This created a group of men waiting for their female counterparts huddled in the corner of the lobby to the stadium (pictured below).

The lines for beer were long, and you were not allowed to bring alcoholic beverages into the seats with you.  This extra security precaution led to a lot of fraternizing on the concourses of the stadium (we got yelled at for calling football soccer), but was still a bit disappointing. The lines for the bathroom were out the door because everyone was trying to drink as much as they could before the end of halftime (when the concessions close).  Last but not least the line to get out of the stadium was the longest of all.  76,000 people trying to leave at once lead to a transportation nightmare.  We ended up walking an extra half hour to get to a tube station farther away, and then waited on another line to for about 25 minutes before we could finally find our way home.

-Matthew Reitzfeld

A Group of Men waiting for their Female Counterparts at Wembley

Posted by olympian on August 4, 2012 | Filed under: Olympics.