I don't have time to read the entire thread, but I read the first few pages and would like to add my two cents. I agree with everything Kevin said in the original post (and mads' posts - I must've been right near you on the floor).
This was my 10th show this tour and my 8th GA experience. I completely agree that when you line up YOU ARE THERE with the exception of one hour to shower and grab some grub. Taking numbers/wristbands and showing up hours, or DAYS later is laughable. What a pansy-ass excuse for a U2 fan. Now, if the venue is able to organize this and keep it under control (re: the passing out of wristbands in Boston), then fine, great! But seriously we cannot expect half a dozen fans to keep control of 500 people "lining up" days early.
People have been asking me about the trip and the first thing I says is DAMN I am SOOOOOO glad we lined up the day of! I sit here laughing because I ended up in the same row as people who slept on the pavement overnight and stood behind people who'd been there (allegedly) for two days. Thank God we chose to make use of our time on the island by doing some tours, seeing the sites, and relaxing the beach. I *almost* feel sorry for those who wasted all that time in line only to get royally screwed by the clusterfuck we ALL knew would happen.
My experience with GA lines this tour has been that if you're not in the very front, it's hardly worth the effort. At least for the arena shows, the first 100 spots are closely policed and it's nigh unto impossible to cut in near the front. The middle of the line - the people that are willing to wait all day, but not days and nights - are the ones who end up getting screwed because you're too far back to get a number and too far back for help from the line nazis. I knew this would be the case so even though we showed up at 7am the day of (halfway back in pen 3), I had zero expectations and would not have been surprised if a few hundred people managed to cut in ahead of us.
I think the stadium did as well as could've been expected. My only disappointment was that when we arrived, they literally parked us into a parking space in order of arrival, so we all assumed they were going to usher us out into the line in the same order. By the time we had to scrunch into the line, this guy came around and basically said it was every man for himself and we could police ourselves. By then, people from farther back had already moved around the sides and were trying to cut in. I just let it go since I'm guessing this happens with any stadium show anywhere, I just wish the stadium security would not have given us these false notions to begin with. Once on the floor, I was standing near people we were by in the pen and also by people who'd been there for one or two nights, so it all evened out in the end. In hindsight, I wish some fans in each pen would've organized to numbered off their own pen, since security gave us a wristband with the pen number but no indication of what that meant for lining up.
Maybe this has been addressed already, but does anyone know why more than half the front section of the floor was vacant? I saw a woman literally bawling because she was in the second part and we had all that space. I thought they'd put more people up front once it got closer to the start, but even though I was second row on the rail, 5 steps back would've put me in open space. Was this an order of the fire marshall?