Pulling off an Olympics is hard. There are about a million things to plan for, both things you can anticipate and those you cannot. I’m guessing, of course, because I’ve never been part of a project anywhere near that big. I have led my share of software projects, though, and that “planning for the unexpected” is part of even those much, much smaller projects.

What I can say with certainty is that some organizing committees do better than others. I’ve now experienced the Olympics five times. Here are my rankings and reviews from worst to best in terms of the at-the-Games experience as a spectator with no personal ties to athletes nor special access privileges.

Pyeongchang, South Korea

What puts this location at the bottom of my list was the fact that they seemingly forgot to plan for the fact that anyone from outside South Korea would attend.

First, some context. As is common at the Winter Games, the venues were separated by some distance with indoor events clustered in the city of Pyeongchang and outdoor, on-snow events at two mountain locations – one for classic alpine ski racing and one for more modern events like halfpipe, bordercross, and skiercross. Lodging existed at all three locations so you often had to take the train 30 minutes or more to get from where you were sleeping to the event location. All fine so far.

Where things went off the rails was in the train station to town leg of any journey. Unlike in Europe where the train station is typically in the middle of town, the station where I stayed was 15-20 minutes by car or bus from the town where lodging was available. Upon first arrival, I noticed a big map of the area they had made to help visitors understand the local layout. It was all in Korean. With no translation. I couldn’t even tell where the train station was on the map.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the army of busses that they had brought in to ferry people from station to town only ran when there was an event going on at the mountain that day and only during the time of the event. In case you don’t know, on-snow events typically happen during the daytime although indoor events can go well into the night. So late at night after returning from seeing hockey or ice skating or whatever over in Pyeongchang, hundreds of people would show up back at the train station needing to get back to their hotel and have to wait hours for the handful of taxis in town to shuttle people back and forth in small loads.

The turd on top of it all was that they would also stop running the trains before the events ended so many people ended up having to pay hundreds of dollars for a taxi to take them from Pyeongchang to their mountain hotel. I had to leave a hockey game early to make the last train out of Pyeongchang after learning of this problem from others.

I enjoyed my Olympic experience in Korea, but it was in spite of the Korean organizers, not because of them.

Salt Lake City, United States

There’s a huge gap between fourth and fifth on this list. I don’t have much bad to say about the first Olympics I attended in Salt Lake. They only get the next to bottom spot because of the major underestimating they did on the number of busses they would need to shuttle people between the parking area and the events. Whenever a bus was involved, it was always this huge, chaotic clusterf— with people in a mob trying to get on busses that came way too infrequently.

Vancouver, Canada

The Games in British Columbia were plagued by bad weather and not the “good kind” for winter sports where there is too much snow. Quite the opposite, it was a very mild winter that year with rain making some of the on-snow events near Vancouver a sloppy mess. That’s hardly the responsibility of the organizing committee, though, so that’s not part of my evaluation.

What Vancouver did very well was handle transportation between the city and Whistler, the location of the alpine ski events two hours away on a narrow, winding road. I knew this road all too well from having skied there many times while living in Seattle and wondered how they would deal with that in the years leading up to the Games.

One of the best decisions they made was to prevent people who weren’t staying in Whistler or Squamish, a town on the way, from driving on that road. If you were staying in Vancouver, you had to park at a big lot in the city and board a free bus up to Whistler. The process was smooth and easy, even if it did require some very early mornings.

What keeps Vancouver in third place was the fact that their city busses have incredibly low limits on the maximum number of people on board. After watching a hockey game one night, I watched as bus after bus passed by my stop with lots of people waiting. Everyone on the bus was seated comfortably with no one standing. Anywhere else in the world, there’s room for 20-30 more people on a bus like that, at least. Finally, a bus stopped, opened the back door to let a couple of people off who were in fact standing, and then didn’t open the front door to let anyone else on.

After another did the same thing, I took matters into my own hands and jumped on the next bus through the back door. The Canadian passengers and driver chastised me. I told them to open the door and let more people on or shut up and drive because I wasn’t getting off. American brashness beats Canadian politeness every time.

Sochi, Russia

I was surprised to learn from my mother while I was still in Russia that these Games apparently got nothing but bad press back in the U.S. as being disorganized and poorly run. That didn’t match my experience at all. Up until Paris, the Sochi Olympics were the most well organized and executed I had attended. I was one of very few Americans who were there, and the Russian people were warm and welcoming. The logistics were flawless and easy in spite of having the strictest security protocols of any of the Olympics I attended.

The only thing the Russians did not do well were the concession stands. The food took forever even when there was no line, and it tasted terrible. I think “fast food” is just not something their culture understands.

Pro tip for any Olympics: avoid concession stands if at all possible. Even if they run smoothly like in Paris, price gouging is universal.

Paris, France

I was really curious to see how these Games would unfold. Between the French penchant for protesting, as seen in multiple examples leading up to the event, and their notorious grumpiness and disdain for tourists, I thought there was a good chance the event would have its challenges. I’m a Francophile, though, after having studied French for six years in school, and I was prepared to let the French be French and to make the most of the experience.

I have zero notes for the Paris organizing committee. Oh wait, that’s not right. Rather than allowing all spectators to approach the cauldron for the ultimate Olympic selfie, they sold tickets to get closer than 100 meters, and the tickets sold out before most people knew you needed a ticket. Boo.

Other than that, everything was perfect. Seriously. Getting to and from the events was super easy with the sprawling, if a bit pricey, Parisian public transit system. There was a huge host of volunteers to help anyone who might be lost or confused about where to go. Security procedures were super simple – it helps to be in a place without a gun problem – and events went off on time, down to the second. And maybe the biggest wonder of all, I only ran into one grumpy barista who refused to acknowledge that she understood my French even though I know for certain that I was pronouncing lait entier (whole milk) correctly. Everywhere else I went I was greeted with a smile.

The absolute best decision the French made, though, was not to build a ton of new, costly, permanent facilities. These expenses traditionally make hosting the Olympic games a highly unprofitable endeavor, and they often end up getting little use in the years that follow. Instead, Paris used what it had and built temporary structures in convention halls and in front of its many iconic monuments. This should be the model for future Olympics.

Paris gets my vote for permanent host of the Summer Games.

And there is no chance whatsoever that I’m going to LA in 2028. That’s going to be a disaster. Mark my words.