I lost in the second round (I was outpredicted and switched a Rayquaza in to take a Blizzard), and am back home now (I didn't stay to see the end).
The queuing was interesting; exactly 256 people got to play, but they weren't the first 256 in the queue of about 400 people; the 256th person was called in towards the end of the queue. I asked one of the attendants about the reason for the discrepancy; they said around 150 people had been disqualified (before the event even started) for having an illegal team. (A rumour going around, that we were laughing at, said that someone had tried to enter a team with several banned Ubers and every Pokémon holding a Super Potion; still, I find it hard to believe that that many people had an illegal team...) The senior queueing was a mess; there wasn't a queue at all until they announced one at 10:30, with hundreds of people already in the hall, and of course everyone ran to join the queue (I was there at the time but still ended up around 220th in the queue). Worse, the queue extended out into the rain (good thing I don't really mind rain), and the end of the queue was reached at about 3pm. So if you were slow, you might have had to wait in the queue for 4 and a half hours...
Incidentally, my first-round opponent was prevented from playing by the GS Cup setting on the games, due to violating Item Clause. (It's hard to see how you could end up violating Item Clause with the requirement to list six different items on your sheet, but...) They called the referee over after I explained the situation, and she asked my opponent to take items off his Pokémon until his team was legal. (His team had competitive Pokémon in it, and I think they were properly EV trained, but his strategy was mostly to spam Sheer Cold with Kyogre, which hit a Protect twice and missed once.)
Oh, about not pairing friends, I was next to Dark Requiem in line, explained the situation and they avoided pairing me. So you can avoid friends in the first round, at least. They were much stricter in the second round, though.