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| - This is our favorite weekend of the year. Montreal is a great city to visit. Great range of hotels, but over the last decade they've surcharged themselves out of extended stays. The park is great, racing layout not bad but a bit unforgiving. Transportation via the Metro works very, very well. Food concessions offer fair prices and a wide menu with reasonable lines. Be sure to visit the exhibits downtown as they close off several blocks to allow extra dining, displays and live bands.
The silver grand stands offer the best balance of racing action and value. Order as early as possible as they always sell out quickly. All seats enjoy good jumbotron views. Book your hotel as early as possible and unless you have an un-refundable guaranteed reservation, always have a backup plan. Travel by car can be a bit spotty, parking is a sparse and costly, lot's of roadwork occurs in the summer to fix the brutality of winter and the race activities start and wrap up at prime travel times.
So my rating. A half star off for surcharging. Even though hotel capacity has expanded greatly and out of town attendance has dropped, hotel managers continue to hold their hands open wide and even try to change terms after reservations are made. Another half star off for poor walking paths at the circuit. Mud, treacherous footing, dust, narrow paths...you need to watch your step on most paths. Ditto the liberal and wreckless use of ATV and carts by security and vendor management, barreling into the crowds with little respect for the guests. And one full star off for site preparation. Upkeep on the island is poor. Solid plumbed toilettes and bathrooms are often closed or out of order. The supply of porta-potties is strikingly inadequate as well and often placed where the lines flow into the narrow walking paths. With plenty of down time, fans enjoy shading themselves under the trees. A slam dunk on the island, save for the fact that most often, the 14" grass is not mowed, or is mowed days before the race leaving a stinking rotting hay field. Similarly, as they set up the fencing throughout the park, staff tends to off-limits many shady wooded areas, which tend to have most of the park's picnic tables stacked up and unreachable by fans. Race-goers tend to end up crammed into small shaded areas, on the thick trampled grass, surrounded by fellow guests urinating onto the bushes just a meter from picnicking attendees. Needless to say, room for improvement here. It's all sadly illogical for an event trying to extract higher and higher ticket prices each year trying to keep up with Bernie's hunger for cash.
Exit from the race is a challenge. Nicely, they open the circuit to walk on after the checkers. Moving from Isle Notre Dame to St. Helen has it's own challenge. Traffic is optimized for the light VIP traffic exiting the internal parking lots. Massive throngs pile up at the Cosmos and Concorde bridge entrances, causing many fights and confrontations with security as they try to close off driveways and ramps that are mostly empty while the assigned walkways progress about 10 meters per minute. Crappy to say the least. When you reach the Metro station, there is often a mob surrounding it trying to enter. The line moves well enough there, certainly compared to a similar event with people leaving with cars at the same time.
If you can tolerate the second class hospitality at CGV, you'll see a great F1 race, fantastic support events, top drawer public address audio and video coverage and wonderful views of the Montreal skyline. Some years we've seen A-list bands performing at the North hairpin for the crowd at end-of-day. The "fanzone" area has nice but pricey race garb and big beer gardens with live bands too. But come to the Grand Prix with patience and high toleration of public pissing. For the money involved and just a little more effort, the organizers would make this truly a wold class event.
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