Dayton Feis Review

The Dayton Feis was held on June 23rd,  2012 at Sinclair Community College in Dayton.  Here is what this casual observer had to say…

Venue –  I liked it.  May have seemed a little crowded to some people but I thought it was OK.  The stages were paired into twos,  at least the one that we were on,  but that was to accommodate limited musicians.  Unlike Louisville last week though,  it appeared they planned for that and had similar dances and comp sizes running simultaneously. Good camping space and stage separation (except the paired ones of course). Food was one floor up and awards two floors up, but it was a nice break to walk around between dances.

Judges – rotated frequently. Two thumbs up. You should know by now how I feel about a judge staying on one stage for multiple dances (“no sir, I don’t like it” (Ren and Stimpy reference, if you got that, you are my hero :) ))

Food – good job there too. They had burgers, pretzels and pizza,  but also provided healthier alternatives like veggies,  humus and chicken wraps.  There was also a Skyline Coney table if people were so inclined. Prices were reasonable.

Vendors – thumbs down, sorry. The shoe guy (George, actually his daughter this time), a wig table and an accessories table. No fun Irish SWAG, no books, no tshirts, in fact, I didn’t even see any Dayton Feis tshirts (might have missed it but if they had them, it was not evident).

OK, now for the big negative… results. It was somewhere between 90 minutes and 2 hours between my daughters dance and the results posting. I had flashbacks to the Akron Feis and LOTS of people were complaining about result timeliness. It was about that long for the second set of results to come out too. Later in the afternoon, it seemed like things got smoother, but people won’t remember that part, they will remember the slow postings.

So the WTF Rating – While I was at the feis, dealing with the results taking forever, I was thinking the rating should be 4.5, but as I read this, I really have more positives than negatives, so I will say 6.5. It could be higher, but waiting on results is big for us parents Dayton.