I drove up to the NEC last Wednesday to visit
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the CV Show. It was a bad day to choose since a little bit of snow slowed down the motorways. When I finally reached the NEC at 10:00hrs the traffic queues to park were as usual. The queues for the buses that take you from the car parks to the halls were terrible, stretching far beyond the small shelter provided. L read my paper bra while in the car, waited for the snow to stop and walked to the main halls, arriving at 11:00hrs. The queues to get in were even worse! It took an hour of shuffling slowly forward to get to the front of the queue. During that period an official tried to herd us into standing in a tighter line so he could squeeze more people into the queue, despite there being masses of room for the already lengthy queue to disappear round the corner. I felt like a cow on the way to the slaughterhouse.
As I got to the front of the queue I turned to the chap behind ma and asked him if the queuing had put him in a buying mood. Needless to say his answer was "no". As for me, I was also totally browned off by the whole affair.
Inside the show was great— well laid out, not too crowded and with plenty to look at. The exhibitors deserve better treatment of their potential customers by the organisers of the show. Thera haste be a better way of getting visitors through the door quickly.
I know now that preregistering would have been a better option for me, one that was obviously not promoted effectively or taken up by sufficient visitors.
A five-minute wait to enter an exhibition is acceptable; an hour is not, Nick Weall, Dunstable, Beds.