Has anyone heard how they are doing the parking? Shuttle buses or on site premium parking? Information seems not to be readily available
Recently announced that all spectator parking will be in a satellite lot on Hwy 9-south, specifically the TIEC-owned property where Block House Steeplechase is held each spring. There will be bus shuttles from there to TIEC, which is only about 5-ish miles away. Article in today’s Spartanburg (SC) paper indicated that spectators should plan for 30 minutes combined to park at the satellite lot and be shuttled to TIEC grounds. For anyone familiar with the area, the roads expected to be most impacted by traffic are Hwy 9 (2-lane hwy) and 74 (divided 4-lane).
Has anybody heard whether they will be charging a daily parking fee or not? I’m assuming there will be one.
This is such a mess… no communication and very poor information. If I hadn’t bought tickets and rented a house I wouldn’t go… People have to plan and they are not giving anyone information. UGH
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Even though my aunt lives 30 minutes from the site, I am so happy that I opted to not go this year. They are 2 months out and have provided precious little information. I’ll sit comfortably at home and watch it on the computer (provided that they actually have coverage online).
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We live about 10 min from TIEC and after a lot of thought decided to also not attend due to lack of organization, honestly. It’s a shame, but oh well. We’ll live. 
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Once you tell people your plans you can count on these reactions: 1) people will respond by giving their own opinions, suggestions, and alternatives, none of which are wanted. 2) If you tell people your plans, and reality doesn’t match the plans because or timing, poor execution, whatever, people will realize that. If you never tell anyone your plans, it all turns out exactly as you wanted (wink,wink) - who’s the wiser?
As for whether people are going to have to pay for parking, I will say that there has never been any charge for parking at TIEC for their normal activities, which is nice. However, they are going to need to run many shuttles, which will cost TIEC money for drivers, fuel, insurance, etc., so I’m guessing that yes, people will pay for parking. Does anyone know how it was handled at Lexington?
I was in Kentucky and you paid 10 dollars to park per day in the off site lots. Shuttle buses were free. You also v old purchase premium parking on site. Very well organized. …
Cross country day was a bit of a cluster. Lots of traffic so people ended up getting to the lots after it started. Then there was no parking in the regular lot so they sent us to another one that was further away and the lines for the shuttles were horrendous. So we walked. And then walked all day. We shuttled back. Thank you REI sales person who sold me the shoes I wore that day!
But the regular days worked fine, though it was still somewhat better to walk than to shuttle, depending on your level of patience. We also figured that walking was good after mostly sitting around watching stuff.
It also depended on how much time you left to get where you were going. We had no trouble at all. We paid for the premium parking the night of the musical freestyle and we were glad we did . It was expensive but worth it. There seem to be no options here and with a class starting at 8:30 in the morning it is ridiculous what time we will have to get there. They are a mess. like i said if I hadn’t spent the money I wouldn’t go.
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In retrospect we should have paid for the premium parking for that day. But we still had a great day, including seeing McClain walk Sapphire right in front of us while we eating lunch.
We got to the park early on the day of musical freestyles in Kentucky, so were far into the lot. It took 2+ hours to get out of the lot after the freestyles.
For an event of this size it is inexcusable that 2 months out there is still precious little information about logistics like parking. I’m concerned that this is going to turn into a repeat of CC in Normandy.
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what happened there?
There are quite a few stories out there about how the traffic to get into the CC site was so bad some gave up, and others waited for up to 4 hours just to park. By 9AM the drive that should take 20 minutes was 2 hours+.
I think that Tryon is trying to address this by doing the off-site parking and shuttles, but unless they are planning on a huge amount of shuttles, expect a long wait at the end of events for the off-site shuttles. But since the organizers have not released a lot of information about any of it - it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on.
We did onsite parking (the field to the east of the parking lot) at Kentucky and like I said - it was a nightmare to get out after events, especially in the evening when it was dark and there were no real lights in the field.
I’ve done the shuttle bus to off-site parking at large sporting events, and while it is fine to get in and out of the parking lots, you’re just moving the bottleneck to the shuttle buses unless you have a huge amount of them available right before the start of the event and immediately after the end.
Let me tell you, getting to WEG Normandy on xc day was like the apocalypse. We waited for hours and hours on tiny country roads, I remember a guy on a skateboard going by who was going faster than us … Then people just started abandoning their cars alongside the road. Those of us who hung onto our cars as long as we could were forced to park them in someone’s backyard lot and then we walked the remainder of the way down more secondary roads. When we finally got to the course and were starving, they were out of food and most drinks. My husband, after waiting on long lines, finally came back with some diet coke, that was all that was left. This was the first time he had ever gone to an international horse trial and went because I told him how “fun” it is. I think I saw maybe one horse compte.
I’m very suspicious of any shuttle situation too. There were shuttles for the dressage (stadium in town) and those took hours too, it was a complete cluster. We gave up and made the long trek back to our hotel on foot.
Knowing the tiny country roads around Tryon plus reading this parking thread (plus the shady ticket situation up until recently) has led me to cancel my trip to WEG. Luckily, I hadn’t bought tickets yet and we can get a full refund on the house we rented.
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According to the FAQ on the website, parking passes will be sold.
Thinking about canceling too. But I am bringing a tent too. The KHP is in an area used to 4* events and it wasn’t perfect either but we saw everything we paid for and had a good time.
Now, 2010 WEG was magical for me. Only because my friend got VIP passes through a work contact. We had access to the VIP tent where there were full breakfast and the lunch buffets with sushi, kobe beef, full bar. I never wanted to leave. Primo seats, VIP parking. For once in my life, I was part of the 1% and it does not suck.
Not that this has anything to do with this thread, just reminiscing about the best weekend of my life. :winkgrin: hahaha!
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In general, I’ve been more than happy with TIECs presence in our neighborhood, and am looking forward to WEG. But I was surprised to see the steeplechase course has been designated for parking for a couple reasons:
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The two entrances to the course are both accessed by two-lane roads, both of which are themselves accessed by two-lane roads miles from the larger routes of Hwy 74 and I-26. Shuttles or not, I’m envisioning an epic jam of vehicles waiting to get in to access their parking spaces.
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The course parking is all inside the perimeter track, in a bowl configuration. On turf. If it rains, as it often does during September, the place will be a quagmire.
For those of us that have spent many years at Rolex, rain and mud is normal. .especially on xc day
