Oilers fans increasingly desperate for relief
As the Edmonton Oilers enjoy their first playoff run in 11 years, fans have started to notice something odd about their new downtown arena: There are few places to pee.
With lineups for washrooms lasting the entirety of an intermission, desperate men have been seen taking aim at sinks. Meanwhile, the alleys and doorways of downtown Edmonton have begun to take on a distinctive playoff smell.
So what gives? Why can’t attendees at one of the NHL’s most expensive venues relieve themselves? As one fan complained on Twitter, “for (the) price I pay for season tickets, I shouldn’t have to miss play to pee.”
It’s mostly a male problem
Women are reporting that playoff Rogers Place is an alternate universe in which males — and not females — are the ones facing soul-crushing washroom lineups. “I could pee and grab beer and my (boyfriend) was still in line,” reported one fan on Twitter. Although there are no statistics to back this up, a popular theory is that this is due to the changing fan demographics of the playoff season. The regular season had a more diverse mix of women and children. But now, as ticket prices spike, fans report that Rogers Place seats are increasingly being occupied by male beer-drinkers.
There are washrooms you can’t use
Oilers Entertainment Group has stated that Rogers Place has a total of 485 toilets, much more than the 172 required by local building codes. But this number isn’t entirely representative of the on-the-ground toilet situation. Rogers Place is a highly segregated arena, with large premium areas roped off from regular ticket holders. These areas are an important cash cow for the team, but it also means that the average ticket holder can access only 322 toilets — a drop from the 380 or so available at Rexall Place. In the arena’s extremely pricey exclusive areas, meanwhile, washroom lineups are virtually unknown.
It’s a “flow” problem
The favoured explanation by the Oilers Entertainment Group appears to be that the backup is a problem of organization. At the Oilers’ old venue, every urinal got its own queue. But now, with different layouts, lineups have squeezed into a single queue snaking out the front door. “This gives the perception of longer lineups,” said Shipton. According to fans, it’s also woefully inefficient.
All is not lost
Edmonton is a town swimming in engineers, and as they nurse their distended bladders in endless Rogers Place washroom lineups, they have had ample time to consider a fix to the Oilers’ pee problem. The good news is that on the concourse levels, there are large empty walls that could easily be retooled with extra urinals in time for the 2017/2018 season. Meanwhile, the Oilers say they are trying to work out the math on the “flow” problem stated above. And there’s always the nuclear option: baseball field-style pee troughs. However, even Northlands Coliseum at the height of the 1980s Oilers Dynasty did not answer the siren song of mass-urinals.