Japie- I haven't seen 'Princess Di' in person, though I wouldn't mind getting one. I can imagine what you have in mind... add the Neo. concentrica influence and perhaps reinforce the orange color. That may be a plan for the future. Sorry, I forgot to mention the size of 'Rod French' before. It's a little larger than my RF x 696- about 13-14" across.

hdd- I'm thankful for friends who are willing to help me grow and evaluate some of my seedlings! There's no way that I could commit to the space necessary to growing all my babies to maturity. I know that I sent a couple of the more promising seedlings to you and to another trusted grower. There's no guarantee that your seedling will turn out exactly like the plant pictured above. On the other hand, it's possible that you got the "best" seedling of the batch!

Lisa- We've had discussions about olens 696 before. Here are a couple of pics of my Neo. olens '696' from August 2005. I got the original plant from Bud Martin (Blossom World Bromeliads- FL) in 1992. I checked the BCR for 'Rod French'. It is a selected f2 of 'Red on Green', which is a cross of olens 'Marie' x spectabilis. It is short stoloniferous.
{{gwi:520814}}

and a closeup
{{gwi:520817}}

As to your other point- it would be interesting to share how we each evaluate our own hybrids, I suspect that we have a lot in common. My view is that I'm looking for a synergistic effect when I cross two different plants, so 1 + 1= a number > than 2. It's more a perceptual issue than a literal math formula. Basically, the hope is that the traits that are most attractive in each parent will combine in such a way that the progeny will exhibit those features ina "new and improved" package. Of course, genetics can be unpredictable, so we don't always get what we want. For instance, if I cross a variegated cultivar hoping to get variegated offspring- and I get no variegated seedlings- that's almost always going to be "counted" as a negative.
So what do I see as flaws in Vriesea #1? Certainly, the red color is attractive. The branching is decent, six was good, but the seven branches on Vriesea #2 is somehow a lot more pleasing. The inflorescence strikes me as a bit crooked and a couple of the branches are somewhat twisted. If they had all been uniformly twisted, that might have been a novelty- like a Medusa's head! The main deficiency for me was that the overall size of the inflorescence relative to the the size of the plant.
What I like about Vriesea #2: the stong, erect inflorescence, The number of branches, character of branching- a nice compromise between the two parents- more spreading than 'Fireworks', more upright than 'Eva', color influence is more from 'Eva', branch shape and width is more like 'Fireworks'. My main concern is regarding the color. As I've said before, I find the touch of green intriguing, however, I'm not sure how many people will see it as "attractive".

This is probably more of a reply than you were looking for, but I hope that this "thinking out loud" will be useful to someone!

Paul