AAMI Park — Attraction in Melbourne

Attended the venue during the evening mid week for the fabulous Robbie Williams music concert. Venue is easy to get to via any metro train stopping at Jolimont or Richmons stations, or the #70 tram. If driving, park in neaby Richmond around Swan St and enjoy a meal or drink and shirt stroll to the venue. This is an open air venue so take something warm to wear if weather gets cold or wet. Easy and quick to get to get entry into. Lots of signage inside venue indicating where you need to go to find your seat. Sufficient number of food stalls selling take away food but at high prices. Likewise drink stalls. Bottled water $5.40@ with alcohol drink prices north of that. Max 4 alcohol drinks sold at one time. Lots of free drinking water points. Perimeter seating up in the stands accessible by steep steps. Plastic fold down seating typical of sports venues and need to stand to allow others to pass along your isle. I found the seating here uncomfortable but that might be just me. Very congested at departure time. Be prepared to move along slowly in the large mass or prudently exit a bit early to avoid the crush. Took us about 15 minutes to exit venue in the mass. For a music concert I found we were miles away from the stage with Robbie looking like a small leggo figure on the far away stage. Thank goodness for the huge screens either side of the stage. Given this is a sporting field it is expected your going to be long way from stage. Tennis Centre better venue for concerts but lacks crowd capacity of here. Had a great time, sore bum from seat but hey....got to see...

Imagine paying good dollars for lounge tickets and then you get there and you can’t find the lounge and you ask a few different staff members and they keep sending you around the first floor of the venue and then you’ve done a couple of laps and the show has started and then you find a staff member who pulls out a map and he send you back around to the other side of the venue and you think ‘finally someone with a map who knows what he’s talking about’ but then you get back to where he directed you and ask someone and then they tell you you need to go up a floor so you go up a floor and then you find out you’re on the complete wrong side of the venue (again). (And that map guy was wrong) and you have to go back to the first floor then walk back to the other side where map guy was and go upstairs and you finally find your lounge. And then someone directs you to your seats but there’s someone sitting in them but they don’t ask those people to move. So you go back and ask the staff again to ask the people to move cause you feel awkward asking someone to get out of the seats you paid for. And then you finally get into your seat 30 minutes after the show has started and watch some of the show. And then it’s half time and you think ‘yay perfect time to get some food’ and then you go to the bar in the lounge that you paid the money for and they tell you that the kitchen is closed. So you go back downstairs to the first floor and you get your hot dog and carry it back up to your lounge anyway because it’s half time and it’s time to eat and you want to eat in the lounge you paid...

We came as a family to the park on Saturday 14th January to see Elton John. We took advice and arrived early and entry was very smooth. At a capacity of 30,000 though leaving was a very different experience. We tried to leave from the same entry point but the doors where locked and security stood in front of them saying they were on a time lock and they couldn't open them. This became very frightening as people who were very hot upset at being trapped in became very aggressive. We were herded into a bottle neck to leave from one exit. Our son who is a diabetic was also growing very anxious as he was having a hypo and needed to get into the outside space in order to inject his insulin. This whole experience was very frightening. This could have lead to tragic consequences. Someone somewhere is responsible for making the decision to have the exit doors closed. Surely the time lock can be altered? In my opinion this was a perfect storm of circumstances and a tragedy waiting to happen. I wonder how many people may have suffered (given the demographic of Elton John fans), from potential medical episode's. I do not hold security staff at fault for having to tow the line and stand by the policy set obviously by Ammi Park senior management, but had anything happened to our son and other countless people who attended, who had medical conditions Ammi Park management would have been facing law suits! Get this right or changed for...