Interesting that I am getting a different set of answers to this question in the "general" forum.
Here's my most recent post there:
All good advice, and exactly why I inquired before "bad-mouthing" a tournament host.
To be a bit more specific . . .
The host's mandatory third-party booking agent canceled our block of rooms and the hotel had given some away.
Rain caused some fields to be unplayable for day one so the solution was to move the out-of-state team games to an unused JV diamond rather than reduce the total number of games. It was located behind a middle and elementary school but we were given no directions. It had barely any mound, and the baselines were the gravel type used on the softball fields. 6-inch weeds were growing through the gravel (that is not an exaggeration). No surprise that they didn't groom it before the game, or even try to tend to the mound. The umpires were also 45 minutes late. Son's team played back-to-back on this field (three of our four were rescheduled here), so game two should have been called for darkenss because it started so late after the delay for game one.
We have had much better experiences with other host organizations, so we are hoping this weekend will be better. We understand that not every team gets to be on the top diamond, and honestly the high school and junior college diamonds we have played on are typically excellent.
Thanks so much everyone for your insight.
