This was my first year at the festival and I was quite impressed with how well the event was organized. It was great that they had designated spots for each team along with a map online and signs at each site. The marshaling area had large tents. The announcer was pretty good. The starter was good.

There were some things that could've been better. The waiting time in the marshaling area and in the boats seemed longer than necessary. I guess that was to avoid falling behind schedule. They could've taken a bit more time for the volunteers to bail out the water from boats. For those who care, it would've been nice if the medals were more like TIDBRF with the division rather than generic looking ones.

Overall, it was a good weekend, besides the constant rain on Sunday. Good organization and good racing. Thanks GWN.

For the most part I agree. Have sites predetermined was good instead of a free for all. Announcer was good as always, would be nice to have some music going in addition to the announcements. Haven't made up my mind on having 3 sets of boats. Nice to keep the schedule going but made for some longer than necessary waits, especially with the sh*tty weather on sunday. Yeah it'd be nice to have the division placed somewhere on the medal.

you would think with all the regattas that GWN run that they would invest in quality stamped or cast medals. They can always engrave the names of the regattas on the back of them so they can have one medal for the entire season. if they plan to do this for many years, they can purchase in large qtys in advance which will probably cost them about a few pennies more than what they are paying now.

write it on there with a marker

I was the one who called last year's event the best dragon boat event ever on this forum. I found that this year, they continued to step it up a notch. All the way to the point that one of the guys came to my tent during the rain on Sunday and said that if we were planning on joining people in the beer garden, GWN would help us relocate our tent to provide more coverage from the rain. We didn't take them up on the offer, but some teams did. I have never seen people dancing on their way to the marshalling area in the rain. The place was rocking. They really are listening and trying to add to the great racing by creating exceptional total experience.

On the racing side, as always, GWN ran an event that was on-time, starts were fair, the race course looked straight as an arrow. I also noticed, they really were clamping down on cheating. Nice to see them maintaining the integrity of the event. There is not much more to say about the racing, as GWN always sets the standard. I wish other promoters came and took notes.

Time for the bad. Hmmmm. Not much to say. The weather sucked on Sunday, parking is not fun, but manageable, last call was too early.

Congratulations to all for a great event and fantastic racing. I can't wait until next year. Thanks GWN.

A great weekend of racing with flawless organization. Despite the rain on Sunday it stopped in time for the final few races. Great job GWN. It will be hard to improve on this year.

Great event - vendors, race officiating, beer tent, push-up contest, marshalling, port-a-potties - all great. Thanks GWN for a fab weekend.

The Good:
- site reserveration before race day
- organized
- clean
- many port-a-potties and at many locations
- short wait in marshalling area
- tents above marshalling area (yay!)
- friendly officials and volunteers
- volunteers bailed the boat for us
- many vendors, great food and beer tent

The Bad:
- crappy weather
- small awards stage
- generic medals
- must be tighter on rosters and subs in marshalling area

Overall great work!

I hate the Marilyn Bell site. The course sucks. Lanes are not wide and fair like maybe Welland (thats not GWN's fault) Hardly any trees and it's not as aesthetically pleasing as the Ontario Place site. Oh I miss that site. The Marilyn bell site seems to be cursed cause 80% of the time that an event is run there its always raining. But to be honest for the first time since probably the worlds it looked really lively (I wasn't there last year). It was well organized and fun to watch and this was all do to the GWN organizers. Great variety of food. Pretty good sponsors. Amazing job GWN no wonder they are leaders in this business I would think.

Great racing from all crews, GWN did a good job of running a tight ship to make things happen on schedule. The A final was exciting and the Mofo pushup contest was a fun way to cap off the event.

The only thing I would add is that they need a more powerful megaphone or PA at the starting line. It was very difficult to hear if you were in lanes 1 or 2, and the there was a bit of a delay with the audio coming out of the race official's boat next to lane 1.
Otherwise it was a very well executed event (I agree with nicer medals).

We would like to thank everyone for a fantastic weekend. We are already making a list of things to improve for '09. Please keep the constructive comments coming. The decision to add tents over marshaling was fueled by comments last year on the forum and the above suggestions will be addressed for '09.

See you in the States at one of the events later this year, or hope to see you in '09.

GWN Dragon Boat