SOI in Wenatchee WA | Golden Skate

SOI in Wenatchee WA

CoyoteChris

CoyoteChris

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Dec 4, 2004
Anyone going to SOI in Wenatchee WA? I normally wouldnt go but Karen Chen and N. Chen will be there.
The May 21st performance ticket sales are...uhhhh....lagging... "Chairs on the ice" sections 1,2 , and 4 are empty.
Most sections in the normal arena seats have 10 to 40 seats taken...pleanty of front row seats available.
Cant decide if I need a skating fix or not....too many irons in the fire....looks like a branding roundup here but I might go.
$65 for two hours of entertainment isnt bad...
(I wouldnt do the 45 minute meet and greet for $100. Those poor skaters have to suffer with me at the Friends of FS breakfasts as it is;) )
 
Mathman

Mathman

Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Go! Take pictures! Write a report! :laugh:

An era drawing to a close, I'm afraid. :( Ice shows will be something to look back on rather than to look forward to.
 
iluvtodd

iluvtodd

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Mar 5, 2004
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Enjoy the show, Chris. We're going to the Hershey one tomorrow night.
 
A

apgold

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To everyone going to see SOI, enjoy the show and if you can take video, that would be even better!

According to Adam and Ashley, the tour is truncated this year b/c of training for the upcoming Olympic season. They will hopefully do more dates next year, post Olympics.
 
solar

solar

I got cat class and I got cat style
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I'll be going to the Seattle show in Washington!
 
CoyoteChris

CoyoteChris

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Dec 4, 2004
apgold said:
To everyone going to see SOI, enjoy the show and if you can take video, that would be even better!

According to Adam and Ashley, the tour is truncated this year b/c of training for the upcoming Olympic season. They will hopefully do more dates next year, post Olympics.
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Far be it from me to contradict two legends of skating....I am only chopped liver....but I am looking at my book on Champions on ice (COI), 1969 to 2002 and I am not seeing a corralation between numbers of preformances and Pre-Oly seasons....
And look up how many stops SOI made in 2016...Mathman is right...in the US, ice shows just dont draw the crowds anymore. I started going to them before the turn of the century...I think it was 1998 in Spokane when COI was here with 27 skaters. They did 70 shows in 57 cities that year. I got the last available seat on a cancelation. I fell in love with Anjelika Krylova. It was my first time seeing skaters live. First thing I thought was, "Man, these folks are small!" But there was nothing small about their talent and courage.
The last Spokane ice show was terribly attended...many years ago.... I feel like I should go to Wenatchee so that at least one person shows up....tear falls.....:(
 
CoyoteChris

CoyoteChris

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Dec 4, 2004
iluvtodd said:
Enjoy the show, Chris. We're going to the Hershey one tomorrow night.
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Let me know how Hershey does! I just went around the lower bowl at Hershy and it looks like optimistically, it could be half full, which is good.....Hugs to all my favorites...you know who they are...;)
 
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Tonichelle

Tonichelle

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Jun 27, 2003
They've seen a downward trend since before 2002. The "Golden Era" of US/Canada show skaters have all but retired (Kurt's the only one still touring, am I right?) and I think a lot of fans went with them.
 
CoyoteChris

CoyoteChris

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Tonichelle said:
They've seen a downward trend since before 2002. The "Golden Era" of US/Canada show skaters have all but retired (Kurt's the only one still touring, am I right?) and I think a lot of fans went with them.
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Think about this. In 2002, COI did 93 shows in 85 cities. 27 world class skaters. Would you pay $65 to see MK, that Hughes girl, Sasha, Plushy, Rudy, and the rest now? I would....and I saw them back then....
How society has changed....I am the last person on earth who has rabbit ears antennas on his TVs and we all have cell phones and computers. Progress?
 
I

Ice Dance

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Jan 26, 2014
CoyoteChris said:
I think it was 1998 in Spokane when COI was here with 27 skaters.
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I saw this one also. Grishuk & Platov chose that date to skip. Why always the people I actually buy the tickets in order to see?
(Kim Zmeskal, Kerri Strug, Grishuk & Platov--at least now I know the Shibs won't be there).

Anyway, this is one of the major advantages of real competitions. 1. Everyone who is healthy attends. 2. Internationals skaters are invited. I lost interest in attending skating shows when they became essentially U.S./Canadian/British only events. I was too spoiled before. When I was little, we went to Ice Capades and I have no idea who I saw. But I attended the 92 COI with essentially all the medalists from the Olympics. 92 & 98. An incredibly high bar with those rosters.
 
Ic3Rabbit

Ic3Rabbit

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A lot of the surge in figure skating audiences took place because of the Nancy Tonya drama in the 90s and lasted until about 2002, when it then took a downward fall due to the judging scandal in SLC, that teamed with outrageous prices for tickets has caused the downward plummet in figure skating show ticket sales, audience numbers, and tour lengths.
 
I

Ice Dance

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Ic3Rabbit said:
A lot of the surge in figure skating audiences took place because of the Nancy Tonya drama in the 90s and lasted until about 2002.
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And yet all those Olympic medalists were on Champions On Ice in 92, when Nancy, Tonya, & Kristi all performed in the same show. The pairs, the dancers, the men. All but maybe one or two performers from the entire Olympic Exhibition. It was not the Tonya/Nancy scandal that built COI. It undoubtedly expanded the tour dates. But it wasn't what brought all those athletes here to perform.
 
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Ic3Rabbit

Ic3Rabbit

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Ice Dance said:
And yet all those Olympic medalists were on COI in 92, when Nancy, Tonya, & Kristi all performed in the same show. The pairs, the dancers, the men. All but maybe one or two performers from the entire Olympic Exhibition. It was not the Tonya/Nancy scandal that built COI. It undoubtedly expanded the tour dates. But it wasn't what brought all those athletes here to perform.
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I never said it did....I said it made the figure skating scene explode there for awhile with shows and pro competitions etc running every time you turned around...it was the abundant era of figure skating. There were people attending these shows that would have never been in the audience otherwise.
 
el henry

el henry

Go have some cake. And come back with jollity.
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My very first "skating live" was a show with Torvill & Dean in the 80s. I always thought it was COI, but I have no idea now. T&D were the headliners, but it was a huge cast, I actually don't remember. But it filled about 75% of Philadelphia's largest indoor stadium...

For whatever reason, those days are gone.....:sad21:
 
Mathman

Mathman

Joined
Jun 21, 2003
CoyoteChris said:
Think about this. In 2002, COI did 93 shows in 85 cities. 27 world class skaters. Would you pay $65 to see MK, that Hughes girl, Sasha, Plushy, Rudy, and the rest now? I would....and I saw them back then....
How society has changed....
Click to expand...

I think that is the key. Society has changed.

What was interesting to me was that although skaters like Michelle Kwan headlined COI, still, the spine of the show was was Irina Grigorian, Beseldin and Polishchuk, Surya Bonaly, Victor Petrenko (my wife's heartthrob :) ) and Rudi Galindo.
 
Tonichelle

Tonichelle

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Jun 27, 2003
CoyoteChris said:
Think about this. In 2002, COI did 93 shows in 85 cities. 27 world class skaters. Would you pay $65 to see MK, that Hughes girl, Sasha, Plushy, Rudy, and the rest now? I would....and I saw them back then....
How society has changed....I am the last person on earth who has rabbit ears antennas on his TVs and we all have cell phones and computers. Progress?
Click to expand...

They did those cities, but they were not selling out... crowds were thinning.

COI was bought out by Stars On Ice because it tanked before SOI did. Without Kwan, Boitano, and a few others to headline - no one was willing to sponsor it.


in 1999 both a version of COI and SOI came up to Alaska for a couple of shows. In Anchorage, Alaska, the largest city in the state, not even HALF of our small arena was filled to see a host of top named pro skaters (Scott Hamilton and Katarina Witt headlined). It was great for me because we were allowed at intermission to move to on ice seats, but it sucked because we haven't had a show up here since.
 
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