Return to Sender: Not So Sweet After All

Dear Hersheypark Stadium:

There were thirty thousand people, give or take, at last night's Billy Joel concert. That's more than twice the population of the city in which you reside.

There seem to be two exits to your parking lot. That's it. Two. If there were more exits, I didn't see them, and there weren't any signs pointing to them

It took us over an hour to leave after the concert. And we're amongst the lucky ones—the line behind us by the time we got out extended well beyond where we'd originally entered it.

It's bad enough that the crowd assembled was like a walking advertisement for why not to live in Central Pennsylvania. (You've got to try really hard to make the inhabitants of the City of Philadelphia, which was lucky to make it to the bottom of Travel + Leisure's most attractive city rankings, look like fashion plates, but this crowd succeeded.) It's bad enough that after making great time to Harrisburg, we had to try for over an hour to find a place to eat (we thought we'd finally found one, but the hostess completely ignored us—and the ten other people waiting for a table—despite the presence of several empty booths) and ended up at the world's worst Chinese Buffet (an achievement, to be sure). It's bad enough that your sightlines suck. But the utter lack of logic behind your parking layout has led me to the conclusion that I'd be perfectly happy if I never had to go to another concert at Hersheypark again, because your parking lot exit strategy is making the Bush Administration's Iraq exit strategy look efficient and well planned.

What exit strategy? Exactly.

Photo of some people standing in the Hershey Park parking lot by Flickr user Magic Bee. They only look happy because they haven't tried to leave yet.