Cheshire Cat wrote:The players seem to speak highly of the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, where the Champion of Champions is held. Although i'm slightly bias since I love the CoC event.
I personally think the Tempodrom for the German Masters looks great.
Odd place. I wanted to like it, somehow didn't.
The only hotel within walking distance was inside the Ricoh. So you could almost fall out into the snooker. (An honour which they charged me a fortune for, by the way.). The hotel bar was nice, but despite everybody there being a snooker fan, the bar staff weren't involved. In Sheffield, the hotel bar serves me a pint, and asks me how the snookers gone. The guests in the hotel were all there to watch snooker, but you couldn't have a conversation about the day's play with others. I tried.
Inside the same complex as the snooker and the hotel was the Legend's Lounge. Which was basically a fast food outlet with a posh name. You could order a slice of pizza or a hot dog, you could order a pint in one of those plastic fantastic glasses. But the emphasis was on taking your order, and moving you on. The one thing they did well was they had TVs up showing ITV4, so you could watch the snooker. Though it was on very low volume, so couldn't hear anything.
Should have been a great venue, but the staff working there needed to do more to acknowledge that people were there to watch snooker. To me, that matters.