Horse of the year show

[gg68]

Sad to say that I have outgrown the Horse of the Year Show, yes I enjoyed it but NEC is much further from home than Wembley and there is so much traffic.
The Pony Club Games were brilliant, and the Musical Ride was good. The jumping was excellent. How nice that it was so quiet whilst the horses were jumping.
However the music so loud that it reverberated through my body. I am sure we are doing a disservice to the horses ear drums by allowing the volume to be turned up so loud.
Oh and the razmatazz (sp), engineered for Sky and it was done three times too. Sorry for my grumps for those who enjoyed it, but Hickstead gets my vote, if you haven't been there try it.

 

[Gorgeous George]

This year was my first ever visit to HOYS and I loved it. I went on Thursday and perhaps it was quieter then as I didn't find the music that loud and loved it when the winners did their lap of honours. As for traffic we arrived at 11.30am and just drove straight in and parked, and we stayed till the end and just drove straight out. But then I live near london and suffer the awfulness of the M25, so probably have a different perception of traffic.

I can see if you went to HOYS every year that it could get a bit samey, will have to think about Hickstead, never been there either!

 

[NR99]

We went on Sat eve and though we had a good time we felt it lacked the Olympia atmosphere, although we realised this is because Olympia starts Xmas for us

 

[mccarron6769]

Went daytime and evening on the Sunday and had a lovely time. Don't get as excited as I used to but the shopping is great and the jumping was excited.

Annoying thing this year was the changes to the seating. If I pay for premium ringside seats I expect them to be just that. They have been moved abut 8 ft back and 6 ft up. Fair enough to accomodate more wheelchair users but they price I paid is the same as last year yet my seats were the equivalent of cheaper ones before they made the changes. They should have told people - I used to feel like the horses were about to jump on my we were so close.

 

[Kenzo]

Me and the OH went on Sunday afternoon, we loved it...yes WE!, he wants to go again next year, thought that there would be more shops though (yes you can never have too many

) but what did miff us off a bit, was that we bought the cheaper tickets (we didnt get there until 1pm as OH got called into to work in the morning

) so we opted for the cheapers ones and the lady at the ticket office said you won't be able to see much, due to equitment, you won't be ablet to see the big screen yada yada trying to get us to buy the more expensive ones and we could see everything clear as a bell

and the silly thing was just a few meters away you'd of had to of paid £35.00 then £45.00 (or what ever it was) and those seats were all empty! extra money for shopping though

but yes we really enjoyed it for the 4 hours we were there!

 

[kal40]

We went on Sunday this year instead of Saturday and I much prefered the Sunday.

It was less busy, you could actually get to the items in the shops.

Having been in the past I understand what people mean by samey which is why I chose carefully what I wanted to see.

Anyway, it was a fab day as my old pony club won the games - go on the Percy!

 

[ponymum]

I went with my daughter on the Saturday daytime as we wanted to watch the ponies jumping. Had a great time but was spoilt by the woman with her two kids sitting next to us. During the 128 jumping her boy (about 7 years old?) spent the whole time whining he was hungry then got down on the floor and had a tantrum!! In the 138s, the girl (about 6ish) was whining she wanted to go to the toilet so the whole family had to get up (during someones round). When they got back she put her head on her mum's knee and spent the rest of the class wiping her feet on my legs! Then during the horses they both just whined they wanted to go home.
My point is why take them when they obviously weren't interested? The mother had paid over £100 for her tickets (unless she got them free) and all she did was p**s off everyone else around her who had paid good money for their tickets to enjoy watching some fab performances.
I usually love HOYS, even more now it's at NEC as it's only an hour away for us and had no problems getting in or out of the car park, though I do think £8 for parking is a rip off when you've already paid for your tickets.