It was an honor to have the Artemis II crew come here, and it was great the community were offered a chance to go to something like this. It is once in a generation. These astronauts are American heroes and worthy of all the accolades and applause they get.
But the event itself left a lot to be desired, and I think the blame is on the organizers. For one thing, the acoustics were bad. I could hear them talking without issue, but the acoustics were often not clear enough to make out what they were saying on a consistent basis, so we missed a lot of what said.... which was a large part in going. I would have loved to been able to hear them more clearly. My wife said the same thing.
My wife and I hurried down after work to get a good seat, since this was general admission and a large crowd was expected. We knew concessions were "limited," but based on the announcement, still assumed that basic things like burgers and chicken tenders would be available at Dumpster Dive and Gravity Grill, which were both open. We planned to get there early and have dinner in our seats before the event started at 6:30, like we do before the baseball games there.
We were not expecting essentially nothing beyond hot dogs and popcorn to be available - and since we don't like hot dogs, we were left sitting there hungry more than hour before it started and we couldn't just leave, head to a quick place in Town Madison and then come back.
This should have been a world class event and we were left with a Little League concession stand. I thought "limited" meant none of the dessert, snow cone trucks, speciality kind of concessions - not very basic fare like burgers and chicken tenders.
I also thought the presentation - four chairs on a raised platform on the infield - seemed very underproduced. Compare that to what the Artemis event looked like at Red Rocks and the difference is striking. The video board beyond the outfield felt too distant for this set up. At Red Rocks, there was a huge display directly behind the crew. The Artemis II event there was also free.
Between the bad acoustics, a no-budget set up, and poorly planned food options, this wasn't nearly what it could have been. Maybe somewhere like the Orion should have hosted this instead. There were no events there today.
As someone who goes to several Trash Pandas games a year and has a great time doing it, I don't know why this event was executed so poorly.