Donna Elizabeth

Last week, I got to go to The FIFA Fan Festival. Innocent times. When compared to The Pan Am games free entertainment by top acts every night at City Hall, it wasn’t as good because the free tickets were hard to get. Ticket master only had the $ 125 + tickets available and the only perk of that was the premium toilets in the trailer. So many things you couldn’t bring into the area like your own chairs and cushions - even RBC Amphitheatre let you bring in more stuff. To get anything free, you had to line up and sign your life away with your email address. It took me 1hr to get to play the stupid games to get the car air freshener with my name and favourite player’s name and my avatar. 45 minutes later to pick it up. Got a souvenir key chain for buying 2 bottles of coke for $ 15 to get the souvenir keychain. Lined up for free to get the Coca Cola FIFA flag / fan cape during the change up from the England / Nortway game to the Argentina vs ? Game. Met some lovely people thanks to Sheetu who gave me her extra ticket. Thought this FiFA party could have been done area wise at City Hall or the CNE Bandshell. At least , the out of town tourists could walk here from their downtown hotels or the FIFA stadium. Now in light of the Salsa On St.Clair shooting that was happening at the same time, I can appreciate the security that this FIFA contained site brought. They checked our bags here and posted the restrictions so you knew to bring the minimum with you including a solde plastic bottle if you wanted the free water. I hope we can go back to enjoying free street festivals again. People shouldn’t be shooting in public like that.