17-04 Cont. - TNA Impact Taping

The downside to going to TNA after a day in the parks is, well, you're going after a full day in the park. I was already tired by the time we got there, and we still had a good 2hr wait before anything actually happened. They tell you to arrive a couple of hours before if you have VIP tickets, so we got there on time and hung around on the grass (well, astroturf, it wasn't real grass). I decided to use the time to test my new camera and it's cool special effects settings.

Some of us don't mind laying on ants. :S

Think this is my favourite thing that it can do...Black and White with selected colour.

Eventually someone came and asked us to line up in order of ticket! Great! We're going in!...To yet another queuing area, where we can't sit down. :( To stand around for about an hour, surrounded by, to be honest, not the most interesting people in the world. I'm going to guess that an awful lot of TNA fans who attend the tapings don't really get out very often. *yawn* The other annoying thing was the TNA staff, wandering around touting pictures with the "stars". Basically if you pay $20 for a wristband, after the show you can go in the ring and have a photgraph taken with two of the girls...one of whom is a waitress at Hooters...Where you can get your picture taken with the waitresses...For free... *ahem*rip-off*cough*

When we were eventually allowed into "The Impact Zone", I was surprised how tiny it is! It only seats just over 1300 people (for perspective, Shamu Stadium at Seaworld seats 5500). The audience sits on two sides, and the other sides are the ring entrance and the TV gallery of cameras, sound desks and directors, etc.

You can see some of the empty half opposite.

Happy lil TNA fan. :)

One of the most annoying things about TNA is the way that it is filmed. Apparently it's because it is filmed "as live", or so I'm told. But it feels as if you spend most of the time you're there wastching a man in a bad suit trying to gee up the crowd into a forced frenzy of excitement because "We'll be back from ad break in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!!" Now, if it was an English show, and there were ad breaks every 30mins, that would be fine. But it seems to have ad breaks every five minutes at least. There's talking, there's an ad break. There's a brief few minutes of actual wrestling, there's an ad break. Etc, etc, on it goes.

Spangly pants! lmao. I'm not going to bother labelling all of these, because to be honest if you care about TNA you already know who they are, and if you're not into wrestling, you probably don't care. Plus, I don't know and John, as usual, is busy doing something else. So, this is Mr Spangly-Pants vs The Giant Captain Knee-Strapping , and that's the only label you need.

 

The actual wrestling was pretty good, what there was of it. It was mainly talking and stupid announcer guy trying to get us excited about the talking. The people sat around us were really into it and there were some kids who were loving it so that was pretty cool. What more do you want from a free show, really, but I expected it to be a bit better. The TNA fan was happy though, so that's all that matters.

There was a small souvenir shop, to be honest I was pretty disappointed after seeing the WWE merchandise stands. You can tell they're pitching at the pre-teen/teenage boy/still-lives-with-his-parents kinda wrestling fan...Lots of posters of semi-naked women, fake gimmick accessories and action figures. At least WWE have lady-fit shirts, hoodies, etc, and some jewellery, keyrings, and stuff.

I had heard online that if you wanted photographs with the actual wrestlers, you could meet them after the show.

Well, you can't. Not unless there's some secret backstage exit that we never found. There was one guy (who hadn't performed) sat at a table being ignored, with no security or signs that it was a signing session, and that was all we saw.

We had e-tickets to go back the next night too, but we decided not to bother!