And speaking of the Dayton Feis…

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I want to say CONGRATS to Rachel from MI…. I won’t say what school or what age… She competed against my daughter and took first in every dance. Way to go!

Rachel and her Mom are the type to wait till the end to get results and it was killing me not to share with them how well Rachel was doing. It is really nice to meet dancers who don’t appear to have that ‘drama queen dance diva’ attitude and I like to see them succeed, even if they are beating my daughter.

Oh, BTW Rachel, can you move up so my daughter has a better chance?  Thanks!  😉

and hi to Katie (Rachels little sister who also dances, and the reason I met the family in the first place)  🙂

Editors Note: Rachel and her family have no way of knowing about this post, so if you know them by chance, please pass on my regards. Thanks!

Dayton Feis Review

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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.

Louisville Feis Review

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What to say about the Louisville Feis, held 6/16/2012,  well how about….

Thumbs up for the judging as they rotated often.  Not doing that is one of my big pet peeves.

Results came out fairly quickly,  somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes after each dance but typically closer to 10. Good job there!

Food was typical but pretty good and not outrageously priced.

I am afraid that is where the positives have to stop though.

The new venue,  although I hear through the grapevine is just temporary, is terrible.  Small and very cramped with inadequate seating and camping space and very loud,  so loud in fact the musician stopped and tried to hush the crowd.  Sorry,  call them like I see them.

Music was an issue with musicians playing for two stages at the same time.  Fine if they are both on the same version of the dance,  but otherwise it slowed everything down, sometimes quite a bit with one stage not dancing at all. I do have to give BIG PROPS to the musician that played stages 2 and 3. She played continuously and I saw her take only one break.

And speaking of slow,  we averaged about an 75 minutes between dances whereas last week in Cincinnati we did 4 dances in 2 hours.

Vendors were limited with shoes,  wigs and zucas but there was some jewelry and non-feis Irish apparel.

Sorry Louisville,  but the WTF rating for this years feis is only a 4.5.

Cincinnati Feis Review

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Quick post regarding the Cincinnati Feis that was held on June 10th. I meant to post this right after the feis but had one of those weeks. 

Overall I liked the feis.  It was held at the Cintas Center at Xavier University and the venue was nice.  Lots of seats where you could both camp and view the stages. It was an ‘arena’ so the food was a bit pricey and was the typical fare,  pizza,  hot dogs,  pretzels,  etc….  The vendors were very limited,  shoes and wigs were represented but not much else.

Awards and scoring were handled really well and judges changed frequently which is more fair in this reporters opinion. Awards were listed right next to the stages which was convenient and the results were posted very quickly so kudos to them for that too.

Overall, What The Feis gives this feis a 7.5 out of 10.