thoughts after returning from WEGs

[SmplySweet1021]

[QUOTE=VicariousRider;5140068]
We had a great time and I am really glad that I went because I would have felt pretty sorry for myself if I had missed it. Overall, the horse events were AWESOME, the trade fair is great and the volunteers and staff are SOOOOO NICE!!! Also, most attendees were friendly and we met some really nice people. We met only a few jerks (such as one guy who cut about 200 people in line and when he was called out on it announced “I am a WEG vendor. I know exactly what I am doing and I have been working all day.” Someone proceeded to inform him that we are in fact purchasing his goods and he should not be screwing his customers). I always felt safe and it was really pretty. That said, I felt that the organization of the event itself was quite poor. The following things really stand out:

PARKING: If you plan on parking, give yourself about 2 hours to get from your door to your seat to be safe. There are not enough shuttles and the traffic is a nightmare (If you are going to drive from the south on 75 get off one exit early on 922 and go in that way: so much faster!!!). You have to pay in cash and once you park you CANNOT leave and return the same day (same goes for entering the horse park itself). The shuttles from the hotels don’t seem like a better deal to me (especially if you have more than 2 people) because they are $15 per person per day and stop at a bunch of hotels so they say it takes about an hour to get to the park. Not to mention that you have to wait for them to arrive (they are on a fixed schedule).

LINES: There are HUGE lies for everything. Forget about getting lunch at lunchtime or paying for things in a timely manner at the official merchandise tent. Also: get in line for the potty BEFORE you have to go or you’ll have an issue.

COST: Not only are tickets expensive, but parking/shuttles and food are very expensive. We were allowed to bring in Luna Bars and Water bottles and that’s what we lived on for 3 days.

DISTANCE: There is a TON of walking. The busses (from parking and shuttles) drop you off at the “main gate” but then you have to walk about 1/4 mile to the stadium. I think that they did this so that people would have to walk past the shopping, but truth be told, I think people would go seek out the shopping. My poor mother who has had a hip replacement was struggling after a few days of this and it was really time consuming to have to walk way in. It would have been nicer if they would drop you off between the shopping and the stadium so that you could get to either easily.[/QUOTE]

Parking isn’t too bad. I’ve gone a few times as a volunteer, we park in the same lot. It takes me 20 minutes to get from my house to the HP and it takes me about 5 minutes to get to my parking spot. Then depends on how fast you walk.

If you went cross country day then yes it is busy but the other days haven’t been bad at all. They have done a good job getting me in and out quickly.

[asterix]

I think you just have to plan ahead a little bit unless you are dealing with specific issues such as kids or limited mobility…
but for mobile adults it didn’t strike us as being much more walking than Rolex – again, when we parked at Spy Coast, honestly, the “shuttles” were as far away at the top of the field as it was to just walk to the park entrance from the back of the field…but, yes, you had to get there early to make that happen.

Every time we bought food they did a pretty great job of moving people right through the lines…but, yes, if you wait until everyone else is going to lunch, it’ll be crowded.

There are tens of thousands of people there every day. It takes a little forethought to make things work for you.
On days we had stadium tix we used the proper bathrooms in the stadium – just fine.

I did not find the shopping to be of much value or interest but I am used to Rolex, where you can expect to dive into bins of britches at 70% off and so on…no “bargains” here but some window-shopping and chances to put your hands on some things to consider for later on…

[fuzzydise]

We discovered after the 3rd day that you can park in the Campground lot for $20 a day even though it says Premium parking. They get you in there and split you left and right. Left is premium and right is $20.00 and it is clearly marked. No shutle to wait for and it took us less than 5 minutes to walk to the front gate. a HUGE plus for me! I would have been doing this all along!!! Definatly go downtown and go to the trade show there… that is where the shopping is. Go to the Horze booth in the back and get a bridle for $30.00 and all sorts of really neat things!!! and stuff on clearence!!! That was where I burned the visa up!!! but it does cost $5.00 to get in and I don’t think there was any where to eat in there so eat before you go. Neat stuff!!! Word of advice about tshirts in the main tent, if you see it, but it. Don’t wait. we waited and they were out until the following week. (too bad since we are now gone…)
have fun and wear comfy shoes!!!

[OneDaySoon]

Thanks to COTH we enjoyed some great finds and I thought WEG was awesome!

Best restaurants:
Malones
Jalapenos
Billys Barbeque (low key but tasty)
Circa 1810 in Georgetown (William Fox Pitt was supposed to be there every night. We ate in the tiny bar and it was filled with horse celebrities, French team farrier and vets, etc).
Cracker Barrell in Georgetown for breakfast (again filled with WEGgers)

Outings:
Woodford Reserve Distillery (great tour, long but lovely drive)
Shaker Village (at least 1/2 day excursion, nice drive)
Land Rover Obstacle course at WEG (AWESOME!!!)
Kenneland - so cool, but lots of tourists in the Kitchen.

Hotel
Stayed at Winners Circle which had vacancy even on XC day. Usual rate is $35/night we paid $159 (call now and negotiate)!!! Nice and close to KHP and we only had one traffic delay on XC day. Clean, close, and affordable.

Tips:
Take chardonnay in gingerale bottles, gin in water bottles, rum in Coke bottles…
Bring seat cushion for metal stands (cold and hard)
Snacks easily pass security bag inspection
Print out KHP map in advance. 1st day can be confusing.
Shop and dine early in the day to avoid crowds.
Watching warm-up rings is actually better than the competition!!!
The grooms and coaches sit near the media corner of the stadium and you can rub shoulders with the celebrities and their teams - so cool.
Have heard some folks snuck-in past security at the stadium without tickets, then headed up to the empty seats.
Shop at Liquor Barn at beginning of trip. State tends to be dry!!!

[Hilary]

We were there over the weekend too - never been to a big-time event before and it was just amazing.

We stayed in Frankfort with a family/pseudo B&B which was nice. They showed us around the area on Thursday which was nice - saw Keeneland and got right up close to the track - the footing! Wow.

I too was disappointed that the ‘sold out’ Freestyle seemed to have a fair number of empty seats.

Got terribly lost trying to find the XC start. There are signs all over saying “you are here”. but the scale is off, and you’d see a building on the map, but not when you looked for it in real life. By Sunday I had my bearings!

There was food on the XC course - out in the 2nd field where you could see #14/15 they had pretzels, hot dogs & chips. And lemonade/ice cream. But they didn’t do a great job of saying what food was where. I had no idea the food tent by the stadium was larger than the one in the trade fair because I hadn’t gone over there before the freestyle. We ate in the little restaurant on Friday night and the food was quite good, if a limited menu.

The first day we parked at the Rupp Arena for $7 and took the bus. The second day we ate breakfast at the Denny’s next to the last bus stop and left the car there for the day. But we had to wait for 6 full busses to pass us before one had space. Then we sat in traffic for 45 minutes. So getting there on Saturday was awful. Sunday we did the same and it took 10 minutes.

Getting back each day was a minimal wait, they really had the busses running quickly. Even after the freestyle we may have waited 10 minutes for a seat.

Sunday was cold and I left my mom in “Normandy” to get warm for a while - that was a great exhibit with the bonus of heat!

[carolinagirl191]

ride the bus

Ride the Lextran “on the move” public transportation bus
$1 with a little planning and no parking fees, if you look around and park outside of the $ parking lots. We waited for 1 full bus to pass in 4 days of travel!
Everyone is right about the warm-up rings. You can get very upclose and personal with riders, owners, trainers and grooms fast there.

[Peggy]

Just came back from an amazing time. People, both the WEG volunteers and the locals, were amazingly friendly and helpful. Much local pride WRT WEG. Even the local non-horsepeople seem to be into horses. Where else do they have horse statues at the airport? It sometimes seemed that pretty much everyone around was there for WEG, depending on where you went.

Toured Claiborne. Met up with Plumcreek and drove out to Versailles looking for one restaurant which we never found (but the drive was beautiful) and ate at another. Went back to Paris to eat at Clay’s Saturday after cross country and Jane Clark’s driving team was eating at the table next to us. Saw Keenland (and its wonderful shop. Ate at deSha’s. Loved the art project horses everywhere. Went to the Shaker Village and finally understood my dad’s obsession with Shaker pegs. Also went to Centre College and Univ of KY since my traveling companion does college counseling.

The worse traffic/parking/walking day was cross-country. We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic starting where I75 cuts up towards Cincinnati, but it only took about 40 minutes and we’re from L.A. and thus used to worse. Then the “obedient” people coming down Iron Works from the recommended I75 direction were forced into a lot down the street from SpyCoast and, thus, an even longer walk. Still $20. I think it was about 1.5 miles from where we parked, across SpyCoast, into the back spectator entrance, to the Land Between the Lakes, AKA the Head of the Lake. So, b/w that and walking around the course, we walked a lot of miles that day. So, we had dessert with our dinner. Otherwise, it really wasn’t bad, assuming you are used to walking. We ended up parking downtown and taking the LexTran $1 bus out to the park more times than not. Parking is free at the LexTran lot on weekends (and, as it turns out, if you leave it sufficiently late during the week). My friend dragged me out of the stands at the end of the freestyle, so no awards ceremony or seeing Steffen wear his helmet for same, but we were first in line for the shuttle.

The food. The pizza was good and one would feed two people if you also had an orange or something smuggled from the hotel breakfast. The salad was wilted. If you felt like a hike, the USHJA had free coffee. We had no problem bringing in oranges, bananas, granola bars, bagels, etc. They asked about cans (during dressage and eventing), bottles (during show jumping) and umbrellas.

I was surprised that the general public had such good access to the warm-up areas. We watched some vaulters practice while on our way to walk the xc course. We had just plopped down to eat on xc day when someone announced that a horse was coming thru and there was Sapphire about 15’ away. We happened upon the run-thru for the next night’s freestyle on the way back from the reining exhibition and were able to watch the riders school in the arena while their music played.

The ability to produce an order of go from the hotel computer made me many friends from many countries. Sure hope the guy from Norway figured it out today, or that the impromptu IT training I gave the woman that worked the breakfast shift paid off.

OK. This got way too long. I’ll probably do an even longer blog with pictures once I get stuff organized.

[King_s_Ransom]

Where can I get a printable map of the Horse Park? Is there a pdf somewhere to download? All I see on their website are the interactive maps.

[Peggy]

[QUOTE=King’s Ransom;5142001]
Where can I get a printable map of the Horse Park? Is there a pdf somewhere to download? All I see on their website are the interactive maps.[/QUOTE]
HTML, not PDF, but it prints. My only issue with it is that the regular park attractions aren’t on it as this would have been helpful for navigating around the park as well as visiting said attractions:
http://www.kentucky.com/static/weg/wegmap.html

[poltroon]

[QUOTE=Peggy;5141821]
Where else do they have horse statues at the airport?[/QUOTE]

To my shock, there was a lovely driftwood horse statue that sent us off at the gate at San Francisco!

[King_s_Ransom]

Oh Peggy, thank you thank you. That is EXACTLY what I was looking for!

[Mariska]

WEG - Almost as good as Rolex

We’ve been going to Rolex for almost 20 years and have been reading about the WEG gouging so we had a strategy for minimizing the costs. Cheap hotel in Northern KY, carpool to split the parking cost, arrived early to get a good spot, had lots of coffee on the way down, packed in water bottles and energy bars. Good thing too, because we couldn’t find food and water on the course. Used the port a potty once and that was plenty. It’s just not pleasant under any circumstances.

The XC was phenomenal but I’m an eventing fan so this was NIrvana for me. I also love Kentucky and the Horse Park so there was no way I wasn’t going to have a great time.

Shopping wasn’t great. Some people commented about the freebies…what?..where?..when? There were no samples at the Normandy booth and three people stood behind the counter ignoring customers. I heard the French were rude…LOL. They were offering $5 tastings of apple brandy which I declined. Where was the wine?

We didn’t see any of the clinicians because there wasn’t a break in the XC. I thought about coming back the next day with just a grounds pass then decided to skip. You can see the same folks and more at Equine Affaire. Better shopping too!

The only disturbing thing was listening to a drunk woman and her daughter at the Land Between the Lakes jump talk about how much they wanted to see a wreck. She was from Boston, wearing a Dover Saddlery badge and talking about meeting the Stuebben rep later that day. I hope that she sobered up before that meeting.

[tm1]

@poltroon;5142029

To my shock, there was a lovely driftwood horse statue that sent us off at the gate at San Francisco!

That would actually be a bronze (cast from driftwood) by Debbie Butterfield. I always love seeing that one at SFO!

[Tornado_Run_Farm]

Parking an extended cab, 8’ bed pickup on the KHP grounds?

Title says it all. I’m one of those that has to park in the back 40 when going to the grocery. Not too many places can accommodate big truck with hitch, but somehow I was ASSUMING that this type of vechicle would be common at the horse park and would have ample sized slots accordingly.

Leaving tomorrow - should I just think about parking downtown and taking a tram in? Navigating a downtown with any kind of garage parking seems daunting there, too, though…

Do’s & Don’ts from those that been there, done that? Or am I just being silly and shouldn’t worry about it…

[poltroon]

[QUOTE=tm;5142062]
That would actually be a bronze (cast from driftwood) by Debbie Butterfield. I always love seeing that one at SFO![/QUOTE]

AHA! I saw the label saying bronze but I assumed it was a mixup. It’s very cool! Lots of motion in it.

[SmplySweet1021]

[QUOTE=Tornado Run Farm;5142267]
Title says it all. I’m one of those that has to park in the back 40 when going to the grocery. Not too many places can accommodate big truck with hitch, but somehow I was ASSUMING that this type of vechicle would be common at the horse park and would have ample sized slots accordingly.

Leaving tomorrow - should I just think about parking downtown and taking a tram in? Navigating a downtown with any kind of garage parking seems daunting there, too, though…

Do’s & Don’ts from those that been there, done that? Or am I just being silly and shouldn’t worry about it…[/QUOTE]

They will park you with everyone else but not park a car behind you. Saw this done today

Bring sunscreen! The sun gets bright during mid morning/afternoon…after a freezing cold morning :winkgrin:

[p3ac30ut]

WOW!

Went to xc on Saturday thanks to some friends from back east and had just a wonderful day.

Went back on Wed. just to do the grounds pass thing and again, wonderful!

Kudos to KY and to all those who have worked so hard to pull it off. Amazing.

I’m so glad I got the chance to be a part of WEG!

[Touchstone_Farm]

We had a great time, but agree about Short’s. That was an inefficient, ineffective go-between. To fix mistakes, we went straight to the Ramada Inn where we stayed, as Short’s was unresponsive. While the Ramada Inn staff was very friendly and nice, provided bottled water and apples to take to the KHP and a free breakfast, and we were the first picked up by the shuttle to the park and the first dropped off (the “free” $5/day shuttle was great), we were definitely gouged on the room rate. No way was the price per night anywhere NEAR normal rates.

Other than that irritation, things were great. VISA was definitely in over-drive with the great shopping at WEG and at the festival downtown Lexington.

[katarine]

Thanks to all of you who are posting about your experiences, good and bad, it’s the little nuances of the stories that are so interesting.

Thanks!!!

[Horseymama]

I’m still here and I just have to say that I think Lexington is wonderful! I’ve been all over the world but actually never been to Kentucky and I find everyone here super friendly and nice, on and off the horse park. What a great place for horsey people!

I think the organizers did a pretty good job. The food is a little expensive ($6 for a latte!), and the parking is a little far. I’m not sure why they put the trade fair (International Festival of the Horse) downtown and not with the trade fair at the horse park. There is a lot of walking, but whatever burns calories! The Alltech people are really nice, I think they tried really hard to make it a success.

Overall it’s been a great experience!