Upon walking into the stadium last night, I commented to my seatmate that I felt as if I had entered some odd timespace warp and was in a foreign city.  As we walked in through the left field entrance and to our (poorer - more on this later) row 19 seats in section 595, I really felt as if I were in Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh, or any place other than St. Louis.  It will definitely take some time getting adjusted to the new stadium to the point where it feels like "home."

The new stadium is open.  Very open.  Sitting in the bleachers and having endless sky arrayed above your head felt odd and great at the same time.  From the bleachers, which are somewhat below street level, the view of the St. Louis skyline is somewhat distorted, but from the rest of the park, particularly the home plate area, it is magnificent.

The bleachers have been upgraded tremendously.  It felt almost sacreligious to be the first people to drop peanut shells on the pristine ground beneath our seats (but we did anyway).  Each row now has seat backs, though not individual seats.  My guess is that they also widened the appropriated area for each "seat," though I will certainly have a better impression of that at Opening Day, since the seats were never really filled last night as people wandered about the yard getting to know its nooks and crannies.  The biggest bleacher upgrade though is the leg room - I swear that there is significantly more leg room than in old Busch, based on the fact that I had people sitting in front of me and behind me and had plenty of room to stretch out, where that scenario would have been cramped in the old ballpark.

The ballpark is clean, beautiful to look at and a wonder to watch a game in.  My better season tickets (I'm in a group that splits 4 bleachers seats between 8 people) are in row 8 of the left field bleachers closest to the center field "berm."  These are terrific seats - even better than our seats in old Busch, including the notion that we are two rows closer.  To call them left field bleachers is somewhat misleading - in section 597, you are really in center field and have an almost perfect look at the strike zone regarding inside and outside (which was harder to read from the 595 seats).  The best part, though, about the bleachers, at least in left field, is that we can finally watch the scoreboard and jumbotron - which are now part of the same edifice in right field.  Poor right field bleachers.

Which brings me to some of the negative items that I have to share.  There are not enough scoreboards.  You can follow balls and strikes on the outfield scoreboard in nice large #s (as you could at old Busch), but the pair of scoreboards above third and first base are missing.  There is a single scoreboard above first base which was being run last night in too many odd colors (strikes were red, balls were yellow, outs were white or blue or something) - it was just loud and hard to read.  Hopefully they get that fixed.
As another diarist noted, they have pitch count scoreboards above each foul pole (at least they do in right, I assumed they do in left, but couldn't see).  That's a nice touch - we'll see if they do a better job at keeping them updated during real games.  I did not see a pitch speed scoreboard as we had in old Busch though.  The out-of-town scores were more complete, in that they were updated by ball/strike/out counts constantly, but again, were hard to read because of the odd colors and placement of the #s.  I'm a stickler for aesthetics like that and the scoreboard design team gets a D for their work so far.

The good part of the scoreboard was the giant video monitor - much fresher than old Busch's.  They showed a montage after the first inning of great plays which brought chills to everyone in the park.  The lineups are posted with batting averages that constantly update which was also a nice touch.  But, and this could have been because it was the first game, they did not have the detail on each hitter that used to be posted (x for x in the game and series).

As far as the rest of the stadium goes, I'm embarassed to admit I did not visit the upper deck.  I did walk around the lower deck and it was generally much more spacious, though the infield area felt just as closed and dark as old Busch, which is really in stark contrast to the rest of the park.

The concessions were somewhat disappointing - I ordered a souvenir soda and got the same cup that they were handing out last year, and the same jumbo dog as last year, though I paid the same price for the two as last year - $9.75.  The lines were very long, but that's hard to complain about considering.  My main beef (no pun intended) with the concessions was how Stepford they seemed - each looked identical with only slightly different names that weren't necessarily descriptive of what they sold.  Again - this may be different in the upper deck, but in the lower deck there were at least two "Dizzy's Diners" and assorted other nondescript names.  One nice touch was a set of about 10 or 12 soda vending machines in center field, though paying $4.50 for a 20 oz. soda isn't so nice a touch.

My overall impression is that for some people, and for me, the new Busch is going to be an acquired taste.  There are certainly plenty of wrinkles that will come to the surface on repeated visits.  I think it is going to take time to get used to the idea that this is our new home - just the same as it does when you move yourself.  Let's hope its the start of a beautiful relationship.