Pittsburgh Feis Eats

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One of the reasons I like to travel is for the food, and when I find a family friendly place near the venue I like to point it out, especially when it is a ‘local’ place that might be easily missed. I found one this weekend during the Halloween Feis.

85596488_scaled_110x110After having spent the previous week on the coast, I was actually tired of seafood, so when Mrs. WTF asked what I wanted for dinner, I said chicken wings. We did a Google search and found there was a Buffalo Wild Wings nearby, but those are everywhere. We also found a little place called Wings, Suds and Spuds that had some favorable ratings, so we gave it a shot.

A small place in Moon Township, about 10 minutes from the Hyatt, WSS is a family-run business. When we pulled in to a packed (albeit smallish) parking lot, I knew we were on to something, and once inside, I could smell the ‘wingy’ goodness. The restaurant is small, but is family-friendly and serves hot wings and cold beer as well as salads, sandwiches etc… You can see the full menu here.

I like wings and these were pretty good, better than some I have had at the big-name restaurants. The wings were wet, and you could get them really wet, so they were messy, but the sauces were really good. I did half and half with half hot, and the other half hot cajun. Everyone else got boneless or tenders and curly fries and there was very little left by the time we were all through.

WSS has 5 or 6 different beers on tap and all the usual suspects in bottles. I was surprised that there were no BIG name brands on tap, not even Yuengling or Iron City, which I think is against the law, but nobody seemed to care.

Prices were comparable to the chicken chains, maybe a little higher, but it was worth it.

So, if you are looking for something other than hotel or fast food next time you are at a Pittsburgh Feis, look these guys up.

As always, WTF is not compensated for these endorsements…. if I could only find a way 😉

West Virginia Feis Grades Day 2014

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The West Virginia Feis for Grades was held on March 22nd, 2014 at Hyatt Regency Hotel at the Pittsburgh Airport in Pittsburgh, PA. Since the feis was held in PA, I have listed it under both PA and WV reviews.

NOTE: This is for the Grades day of the feis (Saturday), which I did not attend, but I did have a comment or two from others so wanted to post them. If you have comments, please add them at the bottom. Thanks!

“I will only add that I wish when they are finishing a group prior to lunch they would push through and finish their TS. One of my biggest pet peeves is to finish their core dances and then have to wait around forever to do ONLY the TS after lunch. Of course this may just be me….

I think Jim Gravens did a great job of starting on time, and keeping the feis moving. Results were emailed on Sunday evening. The new floors were great, and none of my dancers danced in the dungeon room of stage 4…so it was a great feis. Results were a little slow in coming, I thought. Nice to see some new vendors, often I think we see the exact same ones at every Mid America feis.

My two cents!”

and from the Feis Chair:

” Thanks again for your very positive assessment.  (WhatTheFeis says – that part refers to the review I did for the PC/OC day)

The only thing is that the grades day(Sat) is the busiest part of the feis. We were able to do it in 8 hours with the usual  4 stages-3 in the main ballroom and the 4th in a smaller ballroom-Im lucky that i have very efficient,enthusiastic and dedicated volunteers.”

How would you rate the WV Feis for Grades?

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West Virginia Feis PC/OC Day 2014

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The West Virginia Feis PC/OC was held on March 23rd, 2014 at Hyatt Regency Hotel at the Pittsburgh Airport in Pittsburgh, PA. Since the feis was held in PA, I have listed it under both PA and WV reviews.

NOTE: This is for the PC/OC day of the feis (Sunday). If you have comments for the Grades day of the feis, please contact me and I can share them in a separate post, thanks!

Venue – This is the third feis I have attended at the Hyatt, and though I wasn’t thrilled with the venue the first time, and even less impressed the second time, I didn’t mind it at all this time. Lots about the venue was the same, but considering it was a champ day, there were a LOT less people there and it made it a much more pleasant environment.

The syllabus listed 3 stages, but I only saw 2 (and actually didn’t realize there was a third). Stages 1 and 2 were in the large ballroom and were separated by a temporary partition. This was a much better setup than having 3 stages in the same room and allowed more chairs for viewers and better traffic flow. Combine that with less people and it was a win-win.

Stages were huge, I am guessing 30 x 30ish, or maybe bigger. It was hard to tell since they covered the normal 4 x 8 sheets of plywood (which is how I do my normal measuring) with that black material which made a much better dance platform. I did not see any falls and only one minor slip while I was watching the competitions.

Due to the level of the dancers, results were announced instead of posted. This was in the hallway on the way to the back doors and blocked the hallway completely, which was an inconvenience but only minor (depending of course on who you ask).

Camping seemed adequate and I saw no NO CAMPING signs. People did fill up viewers chairs and the tables that had been set up in one of the side rooms, but I rant about that elsewhere if you are interested. There were lots of chairs though, and we did not have any trouble finding seats.

The concessions and vendors were setup in the halls as in years past, but with less people, it wasn’t as congested.

Parking was plentiful but may have involved a bit of a walk depending on when you arrived. There was a way to pull right up to the hotel to drop off dancers and gear though. The feis did pay for parking which was cool and saved me $13.

Venue Score: 9 (so much better then the past with less people)

Judges – PC/OC  always has 3 judges monitoring the performance. You really don’t get much better than that. The judges seemed attentive on our stage and took no breaks that I saw.

Judge Score: 9.5

Music – Each stage had their own musician and there was a lot of distance between them. I could not hear the music from the other stage when I was watching dancers perform on our stage.

Musician Score: 9.5

Food – Same as for the last feis, breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs, pretzels, pizza, salad, drinks and sundries… all reasonably priced, except maybe the drinks which were $2.50 for a small bottle of soda. I didn’t eat but my wife said the fries had been sitting out for a while.

Food Score: 7

Vendors – They had the airbrush artist back which I like. Otherwise the standard feis tshirt guy, shoe booth, jewelry, feis and Irish themed apparel, knit goods, the wig stuff, nic-nacs, paddywacks, etc…

Vendor Score: 8.5

Results – As the morning progressed I was more and more impressed that ‘the feis guy’ would come out and announce ‘awards for X will be in 5 minutes’ about 15 minutes after the comp finished. Based on previous PC experience, this is the best PC/OC results I have seen. TGCs comp did take longer than the others, and was between 30 and 45 minutes, but there were a lot of dancers in her comp, so I can understand the extra time. Even with that, it was handled better than I have seen at this level so far.

Results Score: 9

Feis Flow – Big KUDOS for feis flow. ‘The feis guy (aka Jim)’ I refer to above was outstanding keeping things going, and keeping people informed on what was going on.  I saw a continuous flow of dancers within and between comps, and there was very little down time.

Jim also ran the results and kept that smooth and quick. He does have a ‘not from around here’ accent and speaks quickly, and my wife had a hard time keeping up when he read results, but I had no trouble, of course my Mum has that same accent 😉 .  If there was any comment, he could slow down a little.

From my viewpoint the flow was handled exceptionally well.

Feis Flow: 10

Scoring

Two part scoring with a Feis Score consisting of Judging, Music, Results and Flow, and then the overall consisting of everything.

Feis Score: 9.5 – PC/OC is always helped by judges and music, but the Results and Flow did not disappoint either.

And the WTF Rating is 8.92… pretty good 😉  You can add in your rating in the What Say You section below.

EDITORS NOTE: During the results, Jim took an informal poll of the dancers. It has been the habit of the feis to give all dancers at this level an award considering they have worked so hard to get to this level. The poll was to see if that should continue, or if they should just award top half as it is for most other feiseanna. Seemed the majority (not all) of the dancers thought the status quo (all awarded) was the way to go.

My opinion was that I thought it was nice that they do that, but something seemed amiss. It was when my daughter and I were chatting on the way home that I figured out what that was. She said she liked the fact they gave awards to everyone, but by doing that, they were taking some recognition away from the top half placers. She suggested that maybe a different award might be appropriate, so that the dancers who placed had something signifying their placement, instead of the same award that they all got for participating. I tend to agree and hopefully that came out right 🙂

What Say You?

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West Virginia Feis

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The West Virginia Feis was held on March 23 and 24th, 2013 at Hyatt Regency Hotel at the Pittsburgh Airport in Pittsburgh, PA. Since the feis was held in PA, I have listed it under both PA and WV reviews.

Please add your feis rating for the West Virginia Feis at the bottom of this review!

NOTE: This review focuses on Saturday only for this two day feis. OC and PC stages and judging therefore are not included in the review.

Venue – This is the second feis I have attended at the Hyatt, and for the last one, I said it ‘wasn’t terrible as a feis venue’, and I still go by that, HOWEVER, I liked it a lot less this time than the last. There were four performance stages, and while I peeked in on the fourth, most of my time was spent in the large ballroom with the three stages. As in my last review for this venue, stages were good size and had sufficient chairs for viewers. The traffic area around the stages was not adequate and moving was difficult, especially since some people congregated on the back wall and in front of the doors into the stage area.

When the hard shoe dances started, the noise carryover between the stages was distracting to me in the viewing seats, but I cannot speak for the dancers on stage.

Camping spots were available in the meeting rooms around the ballroom. Hallways were clearly marked “NO CAMPING” but I saw plenty of people camped right beneath the signs. Camping in the seats around the stages seemed to be at a minimum however, which was nice (at least on stage 3 where we were).

For the last feis I thought the biggest venue ‘issue’ was the concession set up. For this feis, use of the hallways WAS WORSE. This was not helped by the people who did not appear to notice the ‘NO CAMPING’ signs.

Feis results were posted in the hall between the ballroom and the lobby, where the concessions happened to end, which made for an issue of the lunch crowd versus the results crowd. On top of that, there were vendors across from the results, which severely constricted flow. At lunch time that area came to a literal standstill, the rest of the time it was just horrible.

There were also vendors on both sides of the big hallway adjacent to the ballroom, so it was slower traffic through there. The hallway on the end of the ballroom did not really have vendors and might have made a better results area (my opinion only, since I have never set up a feis).

Parking was plentiful but may have involved a bit of a walk depending on when you arrived. There was a way to pull right up to the hotel to drop off dancers and gear though. The feis did pay for parking which was cool and saved me $13.

Venue Score: 5.5 (sorry the results-vendor hall made it worse this time)

Judges – Same as the last time, daughter danced four dances and was judged by three different judges.

Judge Score: 9

Music – Each stage had their own musicians, otherwise pretty standard.

Musician Score: 8

Food – Same as for the last feis, breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs, pretzels, pizza, salad, drinks and sundries… all apparently reasonably priced but we did not eat at the feis so I cannot speak to the quality.

Food Score: 6

Vendors – They had an airbrush artist which I had not seen at a feis before and I thought was a nice addition. Otherwise the standard feis tshirt guy, shoe booth, jewelry, feis and Irish themed apparel, knit goods, the wig stuff, nic-nacs, paddywacks, etc…

Vendor Score: 8.5

Results – Another negative. My daughter danced her first dance at 9 and the results were out at 930, not terrible but not great. After that though, it trended toward terrible taking about 90 minutes for the next 2 results and over an hour for the last (not sure how long since we went out to lunch and came back). A caveat, my daughters comps had nearly 30 dancers.

Results Score: 4

Feis Flow – As for the last feis here, I thought the feis flow was pretty good. There appeared to 5 or 6 dances between each of my daughters so there was time for rest between each although I did see 1 dancer from another age group what appeared to be back to back dances.

From my viewpoint the flow was handled really well and things were kept moving.

Feis Flow Score: 8.5

And the WTF Rating – a 7.07.

What did you think?

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