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So Garth Brooks comes to the Burg for the first time in 17 years..6 shows in 4 days. By the grace of God and every other diety I was praying to, I got my tickets. We got the day we wanted, but ended up with the 10 30 at night show, second one of the night. Well, older child and I get our selves dolled up and off we go..into the land of Suck.
Consol Energy Center is on the outskirts of Downtown, and the area is in a redevelopment phase around the new arena, Obviously the first fucking thing is not stores or parking but restaurants! Our choices were the skeevy McDonalds in town (would you like a side of meth with that?) or at/by the arena is Blue Line, the Souper Bowl, TGI Fridays and Subway. We had decided on Fridays before we even left and I had called early in the day to see if we could get reservations. No, they said, we only do call ahead seating so please call when you are 1/2 hr away and we get you on the list for when you will be in. OK, no problem. Now, I am not an idiot and know that 22,000 people at the first show and 22,000 people at the second show were going to overwhelm them..I get that but.. We started calling 45 minutes before we got there and they would pick up the phone and HANG IT UP!!!
the lines for the 3 other places were out the door so we decided to give it a shot and went in..wall to wall people, bar was packed beyond fire marshall regulations, but we went up to the hostess stand anyway (hunger..it was the hunger), Hostess barks at me "How many?" I looked at her and said "2..I tried call ahead seating but whoever answers the phone just kept hanging up' Nicer hostess comes over and apologizes, takes my name and phone number (they text when table is ready) and tells me 2 hours wait. 2 hours?? sweetie it is 8 pm, show is scheduled to start at 10 30 pm, not gonna work so I said "sorry, that won't work" and we walk into the bar area. There are tiny tables and I figure if someone leaves we can hop on in..nope, they decide to start seating people in there too so no go. We leave and go down to Souper Bowl..hostess tells us 2-3 hours for a table
but here's the thing..on both levels there is a bar and area around it, then the back part has table and chairs for dining. It isn't fancy but it is decent. The tables were being taken up by people just drinking so the people waiting for a seat for a meal were SOL. Fine, we are out. Go to Blue Line..line out the door but they are getting people in nicely..except they were carding at the door, even just for the diners so with my 19 yr old child that was a no go. Subway was packed and we didn't want that so we went back to the outside table area of Fridays so I could get a beer and we could regroup and figure out what to eat. at 9 pm I got a text telling us our table was ready 
So we go in and snotty hostess tells nice hostess "I texted the Register Rodeo party and they haven't responded" Umm, it was 3 minutes..give us a chance to get thru the wall of people. Finally a table and food. Inhaled our food (bacon on cheeseburger? Nope,,no bacon with pretzel appetizers, yup added it) and our waitress brings the check. She says ""Do you want to look this over? " Should have said yes, but just handed her my card because it was time to go. I sign, tip nicely, and away we go. Glad I decided to think about it after because she overcharged me by $15.00!!!! More on that later
So, we go out to get ready to go in. Again, one show is getting out and another is going in and they only have 2 gates so the logistics have got to be a nightmare but they have known about this since middle of December and they couldn't have cluster fucked this up more if they had tried. So, what would make sense..making rows going in by setting up the lovely metal barriers they use at the football games or just letting all the people make a GIANT crowd of humanity shove their way in? They went with option number 2. Holy Christ, let's get 22,000 drunken cowboys together and have a free for all..how bad could it be?? When we finally made it in (my kid is 5'9", I am 5'3", guess who I hung onto???) they weren't bothering to wand or check purses, just had us get to our seats as fast as possible so then is the ticket line..oh more stupidity. No turnstiles..employees standing at the bottom of the escalators with no real semblance of lines. Well, some had paper tickets, some had internet printed tickets and we had the paperless tickets where we show my ID and CC . Guys little scanner machine was not working so he ran my card like 6 times then says "well, are you sure you have tickets?" I said "Run it..it is the right card" Finally got it to work and we are off running to our seats (which for the record were absolutey freaking awesome. Concert was amazing, people around us well behaved, and a spectacular time was had by all (every single song was a complete sing a long). Leaving? We hit the escalator idiots who have to stop and contemplate life right at the bottom, and people were just walking into others. completely unaware of their surroundings, but we made it home..no voices and partially deaf but happy (He walked off the stage right by our seats and told my child and I "thank you" when we called to him..swoooooooooooooooooon).
So we get home at 3 am (he played from 11 15 to 2 am) and I started thinking I overpayed at the restaurant for what we got so today I managed to get enough of a voice back and called, Got a really nice manager who listened while I calmly told her that, maybe I was wrong but we seemed to have been overcharged. I also brought up the hanging up thing, but again I also made sure to praise our waitress who was running her ass off and the nice hostess. Manager called me back in 10 minutes, apologized because they had overcharged me(my fault for not catching it but I wanted to get out) and offered me a gift card along with my refund. I told her as long as I got my refund I was more than satisfied and told her that I will come back as I have always had good experiences there. She did say they broke all corporate records for sales in the last 4 days (7 sold out shows will do that) but it was no excuse for them being rude or hanging up phones.
Bonus minor suck The one and one only ticket scalper harassing people to buy his tickets (everyone said they already had them) and the t shirt scalpers with the bootleg shirts screaming because people wouldn't by their crappy knock offs for $20 when the good ones inside were only $30
Consol Energy Center is on the outskirts of Downtown, and the area is in a redevelopment phase around the new arena, Obviously the first fucking thing is not stores or parking but restaurants! Our choices were the skeevy McDonalds in town (would you like a side of meth with that?) or at/by the arena is Blue Line, the Souper Bowl, TGI Fridays and Subway. We had decided on Fridays before we even left and I had called early in the day to see if we could get reservations. No, they said, we only do call ahead seating so please call when you are 1/2 hr away and we get you on the list for when you will be in. OK, no problem. Now, I am not an idiot and know that 22,000 people at the first show and 22,000 people at the second show were going to overwhelm them..I get that but.. We started calling 45 minutes before we got there and they would pick up the phone and HANG IT UP!!!
the lines for the 3 other places were out the door so we decided to give it a shot and went in..wall to wall people, bar was packed beyond fire marshall regulations, but we went up to the hostess stand anyway (hunger..it was the hunger), Hostess barks at me "How many?" I looked at her and said "2..I tried call ahead seating but whoever answers the phone just kept hanging up' Nicer hostess comes over and apologizes, takes my name and phone number (they text when table is ready) and tells me 2 hours wait. 2 hours?? sweetie it is 8 pm, show is scheduled to start at 10 30 pm, not gonna work so I said "sorry, that won't work" and we walk into the bar area. There are tiny tables and I figure if someone leaves we can hop on in..nope, they decide to start seating people in there too so no go. We leave and go down to Souper Bowl..hostess tells us 2-3 hours for a table but here's the thing..on both levels there is a bar and area around it, then the back part has table and chairs for dining. It isn't fancy but it is decent. The tables were being taken up by people just drinking so the people waiting for a seat for a meal were SOL. Fine, we are out. Go to Blue Line..line out the door but they are getting people in nicely..except they were carding at the door, even just for the diners so with my 19 yr old child that was a no go. Subway was packed and we didn't want that so we went back to the outside table area of Fridays so I could get a beer and we could regroup and figure out what to eat. at 9 pm I got a text telling us our table was ready So we go in and snotty hostess tells nice hostess "I texted the Register Rodeo party and they haven't responded" Umm, it was 3 minutes..give us a chance to get thru the wall of people. Finally a table and food. Inhaled our food (bacon on cheeseburger? Nope,,no bacon with pretzel appetizers, yup added it) and our waitress brings the check. She says ""Do you want to look this over? " Should have said yes, but just handed her my card because it was time to go. I sign, tip nicely, and away we go. Glad I decided to think about it after because she overcharged me by $15.00!!!! More on that laterSo, we go out to get ready to go in. Again, one show is getting out and another is going in and they only have 2 gates so the logistics have got to be a nightmare but they have known about this since middle of December and they couldn't have cluster fucked this up more if they had tried. So, what would make sense..making rows going in by setting up the lovely metal barriers they use at the football games or just letting all the people make a GIANT crowd of humanity shove their way in? They went with option number 2. Holy Christ, let's get 22,000 drunken cowboys together and have a free for all..how bad could it be?? When we finally made it in (my kid is 5'9", I am 5'3", guess who I hung onto???) they weren't bothering to wand or check purses, just had us get to our seats as fast as possible so then is the ticket line..oh more stupidity. No turnstiles..employees standing at the bottom of the escalators with no real semblance of lines. Well, some had paper tickets, some had internet printed tickets and we had the paperless tickets where we show my ID and CC . Guys little scanner machine was not working so he ran my card like 6 times then says "well, are you sure you have tickets?"
I said "Run it..it is the right card" Finally got it to work and we are off running to our seats (which for the record were absolutey freaking awesome. Concert was amazing, people around us well behaved, and a spectacular time was had by all (every single song was a complete sing a long). Leaving? We hit the escalator idiots who have to stop and contemplate life right at the bottom, and people were just walking into others. completely unaware of their surroundings, but we made it home..no voices and partially deaf but happy (He walked off the stage right by our seats and told my child and I "thank you" when we called to him..swoooooooooooooooooon).So we get home at 3 am (he played from 11 15 to 2 am) and I started thinking I overpayed at the restaurant for what we got so today I managed to get enough of a voice back and called, Got a really nice manager who listened while I calmly told her that, maybe I was wrong but we seemed to have been overcharged. I also brought up the hanging up thing, but again I also made sure to praise our waitress who was running her ass off and the nice hostess. Manager called me back in 10 minutes, apologized because they had overcharged me(my fault for not catching it but I wanted to get out) and offered me a gift card along with my refund. I told her as long as I got my refund I was more than satisfied and told her that I will come back as I have always had good experiences there. She did say they broke all corporate records for sales in the last 4 days (7 sold out shows will do that) but it was no excuse for them being rude or hanging up phones.
Bonus minor suck The one and one only ticket scalper harassing people to buy his tickets (everyone said they already had them) and the t shirt scalpers with the bootleg shirts screaming because people wouldn't by their crappy knock offs for $20 when the good ones inside were only $30