My inaugural experience - one giant clusterfuck.
We boarded the metro in Falls Church at about 7am, expecting it to take extra time but metro simply couldn't hold up. We finally got to Capital South station at about 9am after a ride that normally takes about 15 minutes. Everything went to shit from then on.
I don't feel too bad for myself and Mrs. TVB since it only took us a 1/2 tank of gas to get to DC, but we were in line with people who flew from every state in the nation and the PIC simply let these people down - people who spent thousands to come to DC. I was lucky enough to get tickets for the Blue Standing Area along with thousands of others.
Areas of the crowd control were horrible. Thousands upon thousands of ticket holders for this area were unable to gain entrance - including people who were in line at 0630am. There were no crowd controls, and no volunteers/ambassadors in the area. However, on the other side of the fence where the orange gate was, things were going smoothly and lines/crowds were thin. The difference is they had crowd control and ambassadors helping people out and directing them. Where we were, there was none of that, just thouands of people trying to get though a measly 16 metal detectors.
We were in line at about 0900 and finally gave up around 1130 because were were still a block from the security area and people were jammed in so tight it seemed to be a dangerous situation and ripe for a stampede.
Deciding to give up presented its own problems because barriers finally started to appear and made it difficult to exit the line up area.
All in all, a horrible and potentially dangerous lack of crowd control at least for those holding tickets for the blue area.
We left the city early and headed back to Virginia to beat the crowds, missing the entire ceremony and speech. We weren't alone in bailing - many others in the same boat were on the train. Ironically, the largest group of uniformed helpful people we saw were in the metro station.
I'm heading out the door right now so won't be around to discuss.