After two games my take. For the Notre Dame game my job was to photograph the game from all over the arena. Minus the suite area of course. I took wide angle shots to show more of the backgrounds in the shots. With out a doubt IMO the look is 100% better. The Krush on the South end looks more intimidating if you will, it looks like a wall of Krush instead of a compact area as before. The East side Krush looks amazing and they are loud.
From higher up and seeing the seats closer to the courts on the East and West side, looks so much better, plus no empty grey seats.
Now to the physical layout, I'll admit I didn't see this being as challenging as it is. But I remind myself that I have 25 years of working in that building and the old set-up is still firmly entrenched into my brain. So it will take some time to reprogram. It was frustrating at times trying to get from point A to point B.
I'll use this analogy, I had my older laptop for 8 years, worked perfectly, and obviously knew how to do everything on it. A month ago it died. So I had to get a new one. LOL a lot has changed in 8 years. The first day I nearly chucked the new one out the window. Everything I had done previously now had a different way of doing it. It was really frustrating, but each day I learned a little more and each day it got a little easier. Now I can easily work with it.
So I'm going to take the same approach with the SFC. They will make adjustments and tweaks as they go along. You just can't anticipate everything.
A couple things I noticed walking around and brought to their attention and they adjusted them for today's game. 1. Where the Krush check in (North upper) they set up a table about 4' from the outside wall (old North wall/glass area on the upper concourse) then about 3' further in, was a walk through area for Krush members to go through to check in, then another table. This led to a bad bottle neck as fans could only get by basically going single file each way. So today Krush had only one set of tables and they were up against the outer wall, freeing up several feet of concourse space.
2. Not as much as an issue, but a couple of the concession stands they readjusted the space for people waiting in line, added about 2-3' more room for people to get by.