bfloxng,
I totally understand your anger and frustration, but I disagree a bit with the idea that people who line up days in advance need to stay in line at all times, or even most of the time.
Isn't the reason why U2 fans created the numbering system in first place is so that people needn't waste their entire time standing in line? Especially in a place like Hawaii.... demanding that everyone stay in line all the time borders on sadism
I have no problem with fans who show up 48 hours in advance of a gig, write their names in the book, slip on a wristband, then return later to line up a couple of hours before the gates open up. Is there really anyone here who actually enjoys camping out in freezing weather or in windswept parking lots? The Portland GA lineup was miserable, and I hear the Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh lineups were equally terrible. Unnecessarily so, I think.
Part of the reason why the Monterrey, Mexico GA crowd was so dead was because most of the people there had waited in line for over three days and nights, leaving many fans completely exhausted by the time the concert started. Who needs that?
I remember the local BASS ticket seller administering a practical system for selling tickets to Bruce Springsteen's 1985 tour. Instead of having people line up for days in advance to buy tickets, the ticket agency staff simply wrote down everyone's name and driver's license number, gave everyone a randomly-numbered wristband and told them to come back two days later a couple of hours before the windows opened to line up to buy tickets. Worked like a charm.
Madonna's promoters did the same thing a few years ago, except they added a nice twist to it by having a lottery in which the first 500 numbers in line were thrown into a bag and whatever number that was drawn ended up being the first number in line.
The problem with these U2 gigs is that the various security officials at all these stadiums have their heads up their collective ass.
Instead of paying these guys all that overtime money to stand around monitoring us for two days straight, they could just institute an "official" line-up system using a similar method to that described above, rather than letting U2 fans fight amongst themselves trying to nail down their own homemade system that inevitably ends up ticking off large numbers of people.
Blaming the "Boston flagship people" or "Super Fan" or anyone else involved with the Honolulu line-up is unfair, I think. If it weren't for them, there would've been no organization at all in Honolulu, fair or not, since the Aloha Stadium security staff was completely unprepared to deal with the hundreds of fans camping out overnight in its parking lot.
One of the U2 fans at the front of the line even took the time to go out and buy 500 wristbands with their own cash, number them and pass them out so that fans would be able to come and go at will. Pretty cool thing to do, I thought.
It wasn't until the Aloha Stadium dopes started telling everyone that they could only leave the line for a maximum time limit of one hour did things get a bit hairy.
Hopefully, things will change for the better in two years' time.