Isn't it horrible when you go to a crowded stadium or ampitheatre to attend a concert or performance, only to find yourself seated behind an extremely tall person? Your view is obstructed, unless you bend over at an awkward angle. If the venue is crowded enough, you can't move to a better-situated seat, providing no means of escape.

What if stadiums had programmable seats, where, upon arriving at your designated seat, you input your height into a convienient panel? Then, everyone's seats would sink or rise depending on their height,to bring everyone to a uniform elevation. Each person would be high enough to see right over the head of whoever's in front of them. Also, these seats would be designed like barbershop chairs with built-in footrests so no one has to dangle their legs or bend them uncomfortably.
-- DrWorm, Aug 15 2009

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For the best overhead view. [8th of 7, Aug 17 2009]

The seats could be programmed to do the wave without spectators even having to stand up.
-- swimswim, Aug 15 2009


Neat! But how do you prevent cheating? (I'm thinking infrared lasers and automated hair-height detection. Bald people get to see better.)
-- jutta, Aug 15 2009


Install guillotines at the turnstiles ? Trim all patrons to a standard height ?

"You must be at least this short to enter the stadium without death or serious injury....."

[+]
-- 8th of 7, Aug 15 2009


//neat, but prohibitively expensive//

I suspect not. In many cases it's fifty quid a ticket or more every week. It wouldn't take long to recoup a few hundred for an automatically ajusted chair. Since the seats would be purchased in quantities of 100k or so, they could probably be purchased at such low prices.

It would be fairly expensive, and probably not cost effective, but it could be done.

I think it might be better to measure everyones height as they go in, to prevent people trying to cheat. Then adjust their heights remotely.
-- Bad Jim, Aug 15 2009


//Will there be a master button with a red cover, and "eject" written on it?//

If that many people hit the ground at the same time, there will be a massive earthquake that will kill the players.
-- Bad Jim, Aug 15 2009


(+) Or you could cheaply arange seating by height so the tallest get the nosebleed sections.

"Short people got a reason now, Newman!"
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 15 2009


How about making the seating arrangement so the rows are staggered.
-- quantum_flux, Aug 16 2009


I can't believe that no-one has taken the automated seat height possibilitt and ran with it towards having an automated Mexican wave...
-- Jinbish, Aug 16 2009


[21 Quest]: Oops. Forgive me. After reading the idea, and then skimming some of the annos, followed by a quick text search for 'mexican', I made my assumption.

[swimswim]: I second your anno!
-- Jinbish, Aug 16 2009


I agree with [UnaBubba], it's egalitarian rather than communist. The guillotine idea from [8th of 7] - now that is communist.
-- Grim Fun Scenes, Aug 16 2009


//[Una Bubba]: I'd also change the name of the idea to Egalitarian Stadium Seating. There's nothing particularly "communist" about the idea.//

When I was in China the table manners were that you weren't allowed to raise or lower your head above anybody else at the table because it would mean you're better or worse (and therefore better) than everybody else. Egalitarian huh? Well, that does seem to be a necessary prerequisite for Communism at least. Throw in a dual saw guillotine and you've got your Authoritariism too....boom, Communism!
-- quantum_flux, Aug 17 2009


Just have a perspex roof four feet from the ground floor, and allow patrons to adjust their chairs upwards until their head reaches the roof. Tall people would not be able to adjust up very far; short will be able to go up to the same final height.
-- vincevincevince, Aug 17 2009


That's going to be sooooo popular with any businesswomen in the crowd .... as an attempt at irony, it would probably fail.
-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009


//Bald people get to see better.//

This does penalize the highbrows, who generally can't see as well anyway as they've ruined their eyes by reading too much. So, in this communist/Vonnegut cinema, everyone would have to wear glasses that gave them equal vision--a vision no better than the worst in the audience. 20/200 ought to do it, I think. No reason to get excessive and resort to blinders, though an alternative would be to show the movie completely out of focus.

So now we're getting somewhere with this equality thing.

There are many other areas to be addressed once management gets serious about this. For instance, if anyone has to leave for the bathroom due to their small bladder, then the movie has to pause. And if someone goes into labor, everyone must leave and go to the hospital, slumped in the back seat of a cab.
-- ldischler, Aug 17 2009


Surely this problem can be solved not by complicated mechanics and moving parts but by constructing concert halls, statdia and amphitheata with steeper banking, say, 10:1?
-- calum, Aug 17 2009


Yes, calum, but theaters already do that. For football stadiums, a seatbelt law would be nice.
-- ldischler, Aug 17 2009


I'm not sure, but ideally, you'd build your stadium with a progressively ensteepening slope, resulting in a para(or hyper)bolic shape - extending this into a zero-g environment might allow the entire area not in play/use by the actors/musicians to be allocated seating, like covering the surface of the inside of a giant egg with spectators all watching the goings on at the 'bottom'.
-- zen_tom, Aug 17 2009


// covering the surface of the inside of a giant egg with spectators //

You should write that one up. Many stadia are hemispherical, but with correct engineering, and the spectators at the top lying face down on couches looking through holes (like some sorts of massage bench), it would be quite possible to do ....
-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009


Damnit, I was about to post this idea and was doing the pre-post search when I found this.

I'm thinking the automatic height sensing and adjusting is the way to go. A lidar up the back of the theater can scan down along the plane aligning to the tops of everybody's heads to do the callibration.
-- Custardguts, Sep 24 2010



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