As expected, people are totally losing their minds over the closure. I went an hour ago and just stood in the area in front of the doors from the TTC, watching people coming in, and it was madness. I would estimate somewhere between 0.5% to 1% of people--there were a lot of visitors on this sunny, though hot, Sunday afternoon, probably a Jays game--knew where they were going.
And, to be clear, when you come in from the doors from the TTC moat, there are two possible places to go: 1) turn around and go back where you came from, 2) continue forwards in the one, single possible direction in which it is possible to proceed. There are no turns or choices to be made until after you exit the Bay concourse, but nonetheless, people would stand around scratching their heads being confused.
The GO customer service person and the two security guards standing around were pointing in the one possible direction to go and repeating "go to the end of this hall and make a left" every 3 seconds or so, for every single person asking where the GO area is. Kudos to them as I would have lost my mind by the thousandth time, yet alone the ten thousandth time I had to repeat that. And again, there is only one way to go and there are large, well-marked signs directing people to the platforms.
Additionally, for all the lost people coming in from the TTC doors about 10% as many people were coming in from the direction of Via/York, looked confused, and asked where to buy tickets/board trains/use the washroom/etc only to be pointed back in the direction they'd come from.
And you know what the cherry on top of the cake is, here? All of the people asking for directions looked totally confused, i.e. they had absolutely no idea that this was going to happen. I overheard at least a quarter or so of the people asking for directions saying they were here just last week and "why didn't they inform people beforehand?" "why was nobody warned?" "is this just for today, or a few hours?" etc. Having walked around the Bay concourse recently, for several weeks there have been massive, clear posters informing people about the closure's date (and long-term nature) posted everywhere--all over the concourse and various stairways and doors to and from the platforms. Overall I would guess between 200-300 posters. So hearing "I was here just last week and there was absolutely no warning about this!" shouted angrily at customer service agents and security guards was infuriating.
Again, just to emphasize this, I saw hundreds of people enter, probably about a thousand total, and with only one direction to possibly go in (without turning around and going straight back out) over 99% of them were completely and utterly lost and had to ask for directions.
Can't wait to see rush hour tomorrow evening--one would assume the percentage of lost people will be lower with the hopefully more competent everyday commuter crowd, but the sheer number of passengers might make up for that. Should be fun. I'll bring popcorn.
