Insight

Rogers Place: first impressions

Written by Paul Figler on

The day that Edmonton and the Oil Kings had been waiting for was finally here. The former “City of Champions” opened its new arena to the tune of 18,102 mostly adoring fans (with a few Red Deer Rebels fans in attendance).

Upon arriving in the “Ice District,” the area around the downtown arena, I noticed right away that there is a lot of unfinished construction happening. There were still construction employees around on various lifts and cranes. The area immediately surrounding the arena is very much unfinished and poses a small threat to the people who enter and exit the arena area. There is a pedway built from a nearby road to get people to the arena in a mostly safe way from the nearest LRT station, but it appears to be temporary.

Once inside, you notice just how massive the arena is. There is a ton of space everywhere, the ceilings are very high and you don’t feel crowded. Some may say this will take away from the feeling of being part of the crowd, but I noticed that I never really had to say excuse me or that I felt like people were in my personal bubble. It was certainly a very good experience in my opinion. There was a lot of empty space found throughout the halls of the concession areas. I am not sure if this was by design, but I felt there was certainly opportunity for more variety with vendors as well as places to display memorabilia. There is a casino attached to the building as well.

The rink itself is absolutely amazing. There are main bowl seats, which are very comfortable. The idea of loge seating appears to have been a hit although I am not sure how the actual in-game experience would feel. It didn’t look like it was the most comfortable place to enjoy a hockey game. Then there are the usual row of luxury boxes. I didn’t focus a lot of time trying to see into them, but they did appear to be generally the same as any other luxury boxes aside from being brand new. As far as I could tell the two ends of the arena were home to theatre-style luxury boxes. They had a lot of seats in them and all the amenities you would expect from renting a box for the hockey season. The second level (or the seventh level according to the arena elevators) had very steep seating. In the tweet I added above, I was standing at the top of the back end of the seating. It felt like vertigo could set in at any moment. The seats here looked as comfortable as the seats in the front row, which was nice to see.

I found a few things odd about the way the seating was set up. The middle seats on the sides of the arena were barricaded. It just seemed very out of place to have different railings set up in that particular area. I also noted that the game day host stuck mainly to these areas. I was told by another fan that those seats were more expensive, so that might now be the advantage to spending your extra dollars.

While I was unable to get into the media area of Rogers Place, from my vantage point the media were treated VERY well. The new spaces for them had all the technology they required and a lot of room. They even got a toilet!

 

There were a few minor things wrong with the arena, which I am sure they will work out with practice as well as some finishing. I noticed in many places the “job wasn’t done.” It looked like they rushed the completion a little bit (cracks in the drywall, corners with chunks missing, partially polished floors, etc.). It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have opened up, but it’s definitely something they should look at getting finished up before the Edmonton Oilers make their debut. They also need to work on the security checkpoints to access the arena. The lines were slow and it didn’t appear as though they had practiced much of what they should have done. Again, time will cure this.

The experience overall was very good. Thank you to the Edmonton Oil Kings, the Edmonton Oilers, Oilers Entertainment Group and Rogers Place for a really fun evening despite the delay.