Wenatchee Wild
Rink: Town Toyota Center
Capacity: 4,300
Built: 2008
League: WHL
City: Wenatchee, Washington
Home Of: Wenatchee Wild
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: October 25, 2024 vs Tri-City
Unique Arena: #93
WHL Arena: #19
The Town Toyota Center sits just off the shores of the Columbia River near the north end of Wenatchee. Situated right next to a set of train tracks, it can actually be a bit of a pain to get out of post-game, as all paths out of the immediate neighborhood involve crossing the tracks, and the night we were there a train sat idle on them. The parking lot on site is not exactly large, but there is enough off-site parking close by to accommodate the crowds. A small community rink is also attached, and it might be the coldest rink I’ve ever stepped foot in. Thankfully that didn’t transfer to the main rink, which is done up in a nice red brick facade with lots of glass windows and doors. However, the ticket windows are located outside, which always gets a thumbs down from me. Thankfully we live in an age now where you’re more likely to have your ticket on your phone before showing up anyway.
In my first glimpse of the Town Toyota Center, I could only think of how similar it is to the CAA Centre in Brampton. It’s a U-shaped seating bowl with no access to the top of the U, other than some limited standing room spots. The top of the U also has tunnels towards the dressing rooms and Zamboni bay. There are 4,300 seats, with a set of suites down each end (with some more VIP seating in the end). The concourse was also similar to Brampton, though much more well lit and open. It was very spartan and showed off little team history (the Wild organization has been around since 2008) or anything related to the town or other events held here. It has the bad setup of no centre ice scoreboard, but just a single videoboard at the top of the U.
My biggest criticism of the rink was the poorly run A/V operations. Many of the graphics were of the clipart variety, while they only had about 2-3 hype videos to choose from that just played on a loop every few minutes. It gave off a bit of an amateurish vibe. The night we were there the sound system in half the rink was also not working. Now technical problems happen, but when we sat in an area where the speakers were working, they were still pretty garbled, and it was hard to make out any PA announcements. There were lots of random and annoying sound effects throughout the game too, like playing the Ric Flair WOOOO every single time the Wild cleared the defensive zone on a PK.
They also constantly pump dry ice in throughout the game every few minutes which just seems unnecessary.
Moving onto the positives though: while we saw a crowd that was only about half capacity, the fans in attendance were loud and knowledgeable and seem to be a great addition to the CHL. One other cool thing was while at first glance it seems weird that the Wild have all the old championship banners of the franchise’s former days as the Kootenay and Winnipeg Ice, they are newly-made banners that acknowledge the team’s lineage from Kootenay to Winnipeg and now to Wenatchee. A nice subtle touch.
Any problems I had with the Town Toyota Center are all very fixable issues. The main bones of the rink itself are solid. It’s a pretty generic, slightly smaller than average size clone rink that, if run properly, would probably rank somewhere close to the middle of my CHL travels. As it stands now the flaws really drag the Wenatchee experience down. Hopefully those get ironed out in the future. Regardless, Wenatchee as a market and fan base is a welcome addition to the WHL and CHL as a whole, and I can see this working out very well in the future.
