It was great to see some familiar faces and catch up with toffees old and new in our new home. It will take us all some time getting used to it before it feels like home, and we know she has some big shoes to fill following Goodison.
BMD easily the best ground I’ve been in to watch a football match, without question - the exterior is incredible, it feels like it’s been there forever in a brilliant way, the club shop is great (needs more gear), and the interior pitch side is immaculate for the match, not a bad seat anywhere, as has been said before. It will be very loud once we get going in there, and the sirens and z cars before the games felt ear splitting.
Hopefully the issues, of which there were a few, are just teething troubles and get ironed out fairly quickly.
They need to address the turnstile issues on the west side, the queue for 2 was a joke with no stewards. We ended up walking past it to get in or we would have been frigged.
Definitely needs more Everton-ing on the concourses to help make us feel home, lots of empty bare walls, posts etc that can and should be done up.
Not enough places to put drinks and food down - shelves etc ( north west area at least) - plenty of areas that these can be added.
There was clearly an issue with the bars where we were (block 247). Queueing for 30 mins before the game before we got our stuff, looked the same issue at half time so didn’t bother.
The beers were poured on one stand so each of the till operators had to walk to one or two staff to get the pints, so there was quite a queue the wrong side of the counter! Also ran out of tea before the game started on one bar….
I thought we would have had those fast pour pints systems behind the bars (like Wembley and the spurs stadium), we had the cups at Goodison but not the kit, seems at BMD we don’t have the cups or the kit!?
Went down after the first game, when clearly there were less people. The chicken stand was closed (ran out of everything I was told). The dockyard bar was open and fairly quiet - asked for a couple of San Miguel’s, was told the machine had broken but bud was available. Asked for those instead, only for another member of staff to find two San Miguel’s from somewhere
all the staff were sound and clearly some were very green, so we need to cut them some slack.
A few fellas near us were getting a little peed off with them before the game and it’s not a good look, but you can understand their frustration when we’re waiting 30 mins to get served in our brand new ground - it was actually slower and worse than Goodison.
Dont think the friedkins will tolerate what was going on with the food and drinks today and hopefully they will get it sorted out, or fans will be taking there custom elsewhere. All Needs resolving asap.
Transport and the parking restrictions were still a mess as far as I could tell - even when we left near the end of the legends game, the roads were grid locked all around.
Overall, it’s an incredible stadium for watching footy, that has a few teething troubles to sort out for the F&B provision. Fingers crossed they get sorted out quickly.
