| Waterfront Park continues to be one of the best draws in all of minor league baseball. Whether it's because of the stadium itself, or because of the 3.5 million people that live in the vicinity, can be debated. When it was built in '94, Waterfront was one of the first of the new breed of stadiums - those that have an open concourse at the top of the seating bowl, with luxury boxes stacked on top. So having visited for the first time in '99, I was not as impressed as I might have been several years ago. Still there is little debating that this is one of the finest parks in the Eastern League. Set on the Delaware River, the water can be seen over the right field fence. So for those who can see the water from their seats, this is definitely a scenic park. The Thunder put on a good show with many between inning events as well as two mascots named Boomer and Strike. Though neither seem to be too active. Between inning contests included the Dizzy Bat Race, Race the Mascot, and musical chairs. The concourse area has two main concession stands as well as several other food kiosks. The variety and quality of concessions is excellent - besides the normal ballpark fare, they offer Famous Dave's BBQ (pulled pork, brisket), Chickie & Pete's crab fries, as well as some healthy options (grilled chicken and California burgers). Prices are a bit high on concessions, but overall they are relatively cheap ($2 parking and free programs). Seating is comfortable with the aisles being wider than in other newer parks. Two minor complaints with the structure of the ballpark - first, it has the useless center concourse which splits the seating sections into an upper and lower part. Second, with the press box on the concourse level, it creates a dark spot on the concourse. These are two issues which seem to have been resolved in most new parks that have been built since. Waterfront has two electronic scoreboards and one manual scoreboard. But strangely, they have not gotten around to updating their video board to HD yet, so the picture is a bit grainy. In fact, after returning for a second visit in 2008, I saw very little that had changed since 1999. I realize the park is only 15 years old, but I still figured some improvements would have been made. In summary, a nice place to see a game, but one that doesn't offer anything too unique. Amazingly, Trenton lost their affiliated team in the minor league restructuring of 2021 and settled for a summer collegiate league team to replace them.
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