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All three anchors were impressed with the mood in the nation's capital. "This town has really taken on a party atmosphere," CBS' Katie Couric stated. "Wall to wall people," ABC's Charles Gibson put it, "hotels full, streets stalled, sidewalks jammed." For NBC's Brian Williams the city was "packed with visitors, choked with security, positively buzzing with excitement." ABC's Gibson personalized that buzz by completing his network's Road to the Inauguration series, which had followed the road trip of Nikki Lecompte, a New Orleans mother of five, living in Houston since Hurricane Katrina, who drove with her family to Washington by way of Selma, the Civil-Rights-era hotspot. "No tickets to anything?" "Nope." "Not going to any balls?" "No." "And they did not invite you to the White House?" "No." "And you are not sitting up there on the podium?" "No" "And you probably could be a mile away?" "Probably." "But still worth it?" "Still worth it."
CBS' Sharyl Attkisson speculated that for Washington, the Inauguration "may be the biggest event here in history." The District of Columbia does not allow camping so celebrants "plan to sleep in their cars and on tour buses." NBC's Ron Allen was less definitive, estimating that it was "one of the largest" pilgrimages ever to the nation's capital. ABC's David Muir followed measurements calculated at the University of Illinois to offer a cute show-and-tell to illustrate what a standing-room-only crowd of one million would look like on the DC Mall: each person would have as much elbow room as someone standing on an opened newspaper; with a two-million-person crowd there would not even be enough space to turn around. Total installation of Port-A Potties: 5,000.
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