We had a fantastic time all week watching all the SJ. Venue was easy to navigate, lots of bathrooms, tons of great food (expensive as expected), easy shuttles for parking, and truly unbelievable sport. I am sad to be home, we loved it and have no complaints. Yes, they had construction going on but it didn’t interfere with our enjoyment one bit!
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You may have scored the greatest ticket exchange in the history of the universe. Because as great as it would have been to see Graves and Werth duke it out to music, NOTHING compared to that final day for team show jumping.
I was there all last week for driving and show jumping. I enjoyed every bit of it, and was truly impressed at how much work had been done and how many issues I heard about from the first week were non issues the second week.
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This was my first (hopefully one of many) WEG with my 15 yr-old daughter. We had a BLAST! We had a hotel room in Hendersonville, about a 30 minute drive on highways. The indoor arena was a sauna (like, when you stood up there was a puddle of sweat left behind and we kept sweating the stamps for in/out access off and having to get re-stamped with each exit.)
My DD thought she was getting a sore throat on the 2nd day … by the 3rd day she decided it was not from illness at all, but instead for screaming and cheering for competitors IRL she had only ever seen on the internet. 
I heard two bits of hearsay: one is that at the last minute the arena building was not ready so it came down to lights or ventilation fans. (Obviously, lights were chosen - lol.) The second is that the building is going to be leveled after this event.
A bad accident happened due to the way the stands were designed - the first step of the concrete stairway sticks out into the walkway. (I fell backwards off one at one point and was able to hop and balance and grab a railing and avoided falling.) Lots of folks were tripping. A person across the arena tripped going forward and fell and hit their head on the concrete and left via ambulance … my daughter saw the stretcher going out and the blood being cleaned. 
It’s a really lovely arena if the tripping hazards can be addressed … it would be a real shame to lose it. It really is a marvelous facility.
My daughter had a real moment of maturity when she turned to me and asked me to get dad on speakerphone. She then proceeded to thank us for making this trip happen, taking her out of school and spending hard-earned money on plane tickets, hotel room and all the cost for the week. She said it is definitely one of the best experiences she has ever had. I really hope WEG is able to be continued rather than world championships, just because it does seem to be a step above.
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I believe it will be converted to an ice rink that can do double duty as a climate controlled riding area … or for riders to just go lay on if we have another September like this… 
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My bestie and I went for all the SJ and we had an AMAZING time! We had no trouble with parking. The vendors were fantastic and we did a fair amount of shopping. The horse sport was breathtaking (we watched all the SJ and Driving Marathon). We were fortunate enough to get to go out with two fox hunts in the Tryon area three times. Everyone we met was lovely. The food was great. The beer was plentiful. The restaurants had long waits, but if you were in a hurry it was easy to stop by a food truck and get an equally good meal. We also went to Normandy, and while it was different, I don’t feel that one was “better” than the other event. It was crazy hot in Tryon, but the bathrooms in Normandy were, um, questionable. Every venue is going to have it’s strengths and weaknesses.
Cheers to TIEC for hosting such a wonderful event and I hope we are able to attend many WEGs in the future!
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FYI I know the person in question. She was the first to say she was taking a shortcut and didn’t look down to see where she was going. While quite an ugly fall, I saw her a few days ago and she’s up and back to normal activities. She repeatedly said that TIEC was incredible in the way they handled things and she felt that they genuinely cared. I’d hate for them to get smeared for falsehoods since the person involved has never blamed the design of the stands.
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@GraceLikeRain - Thank you for the update! I’m so glad she’s OK! Interesting to see how rumors grow (and here I am participating, oops!) I do think they need to do something about the first level of stairs sticking out, as multiple people tripped (myself included.)
But I’m VERY glad to hear the facility will continue to be finished and even turned into an ice arena – if the weather is ever hot like that again everyone will attend the indoor events no matter what they are, lol.
It was indeed terribly warm in the indoor. Thankfully the stewards really paidd attention to all of our needs and wants and were very obliging when my team manager requested some misting fans be provided in the warm up arena…They were lifesavers!!
