Dale J.
Yelp
My wife and I went to the GnR/Carrie Underwood concert this past weekend and were really looking forward to a great experience. We had heard great things about the venue for soccer and figured they would have worked the bugs out of getting people into the venue for high profile events (i.e. Messi and Inter Milan recently!). Boy, were we wrong! While the concert itself was great, the first part of the experience was overshadowed by the horrendous time it took to get to our floor seats. As many on here have noted, the lines were hours long to get to some of the most expensive tickets available! You would think that taking care of those customers would be some sort of priority. However, that was not the case. My wife and I arrived a bit before 5 and had lucked out by getting a parking pass in Lot 3 just down the hill from Gate B. The lines were so long (3 to 4 lines merging to one gate) that it took us almost an hour and a half to get in while Gate C was basically wide open with 10-12 event staff standing around, not doing a lot. People in large groups were coming up from the back, cutting line, moving around and jockeying for position. We witnessed several incidents that could have easily turned in to a fight.
The event staff, something called Best Crowd Management I believe, do not really live up to their name. We spoke to several of their staff to ask for some guidance on what was taking so long and to get someone to help monitor the line, but our requests were met with blank stares and "I don't know what to tell you" responses. When we asked to get someone in charge to speak to, we were ignored.
It turns out that the venue only had set of ticket scanners (4 then ultimately 5) that could scan the tickets for floor seats at Gate B then you had to go through a process to get wrist bands with only 4-5 people available to put those on. Finally they opened the VIP line (guess most of the VIPs got in) for floor seat admission.
Then once inside the venue, all of the people with floor seats (about 50% of the attendees it appeared) were funneled down one set of stairs to the floor itself where they had 2-3 people confirming wrist bands! All of this while trying to get drinks or trying to use the bathrooms (which were great btw) and get down to enjoy Carrie Underwood.
Then, in between acts, trying to get back up stairs to use the restroom (none that we saw near floor seats) and get more drinks (had near floor seats but lines were longer), it was another nightmare. Also, some of the lines were already running out of beer it was reported and that was even before GnR went on stage.
The artists and concert itself was a 5 out of 5, then venue was 1 out of 5. (fan experience and sound) Do better Nashville!