I made my first visit to New Wembley on March 30th to see the MK Dons take on Grimsby in the Johnstons Paint Trophy Final. Having been to the old Wembley on numerous occasions I expected to see some major improvements and have to say I have mixed views on the new national stadium.

Getting to Wembley is one of the worst trips in a car, it always has been but you would have thought that after spending so much money on the venue that they would have spent some money building a new access road or something similar.

We found our car park and asked the stewards where we parked, "over there" came the reply from a very unenthusiastic steward. Disabled bays are not marked and you literally just park anywhere on the ground floor. Considering we paid £12 to park here, it's not the most impressive start.

Please note if you need to arrange parking you must do this via this website www.csparking.com

The car park itself is about 5 mins away from the stadium and the road that leads to the entrance is far from Wheelchair friendly, the road has a very small pavement area and it's currently "under construction" so it's a bumpy ride and you have to actually use the road to get to perrimiter around the ground.

We were situated in Block N, so it was a trip up the slope towards the turnstyle. We reached the Disabled entrance and after banging on the door for 5 mins my helper had to actually go and ask someone in the turnstile to open the door for us. One thing we noticed when we finally got in was how cold it was inside, in fact it was warmer outside!.

We grabbed some food and drink to kill some time and they had a fairly good range of food from pies, burgers etc and some very nice fish and chips. The pricing is actually not to bad, considering that if you want value for money you should never buy food at a football ground!

I paid £8.50 for fish, chips and coffee, however, you then have to go back to the condiments stand, where you battle with hundeds of other people to get sauce, forks etc. It's not easy if you are in a wheelchair! One more thing about the food, if you get chips and want a chip fork forget it, the ones they supply are so bad you can't even spear a chip on them.!

My next gripe is the toilets...ok, they have lots of disabled ones, however, the first one we went to would not open despite using my radar key. We had to find another steward and he informed me that the one I wanted to use was flooded and out of action, and so directed me to another. Yet again my Radar key failed to work and we had to find another steward to let us in. The annoying thing was we asked 4 stewards who were standing around and none seemed to have any idea what a radar key was ! Have to say that once I finally got in the toilet were very clean and pressentable.

We then headed for our seats and that's really where all the bad points were left behind. There is ample room for quite a few wheelchairs and the view is superb (pictures included). There is no restriction to the view if fans are standing up (unless they are waving flags!) and with a perfect view of both large screens it's impossible to miss any of the action on the field.

The stadium itself is magnificent and really brings out a great atmosphere, howeverI would say that I felt that the Emirates was better and still feel that the Millenium is a slighty better stadium overall. Considering the money and time spent on New Wembley you might expect a bit more.

The good thing was the MK Dons won, both goals (and the missed penalty) where down the end I was closest and the sun was shinning, so it made for a great day out.

Once again Wembley lets itself down when you want to get out, prepare yourself for a gridlock of traffic from leaving the car park, right through the streets of Wembley. We know the Wembley area well and were able to make use of a number of "back roads" however it still took us over an hour to get away, I hate to think what kind of journey the poor Grimsby fans endured!.

Overall, as a football fan, you can't beat a day at Wembley, and once inside the stadium is does make up for all the problems around and outside the ground. Unlike the Emirates - where i would be happy to go back to week after week, Wembley is one best left for special occassions!