MacEwan Hall Concerts — Attraction in Calgary

Unpopular opinion: This venue is actually really terrible for anyone that is Not a student. Campus is easy to drive through but there are no markings for the actual hall anywhere. And if the concert is later at night there's nobody to ask where the Hall is once you get parking. The parking is also really expensive on top of your venue concert. There's no instructions or anyone telling you where to park so the guess work is up to you and that is $5.00 per hour maxing out at $22.xx for the night on top your concert ticket. Then you go searching blindly for MacEwan hall, yes you use GPS but how much of a headache is that you spend your time not taking in the scenery and venue but staring into your phone wondering where the hall Is. So if you're a student this is a great venue because it's easily accessible and you'll have people in that demographic bracket. If you're not a student there are Far way too many venues in Calgary better than MacEwan Hall to have to go through all this trouble. Calgary is SPOILED for venues. A venue you roll up, park, walk in no guess work.

I'll never go to another concert here, it's more headache guesswork...

The Dead South Band was awesome no complaints there. The Hall was standing room only as noted General Access. They had a Beer Gardens for people to socialize before the band played all is great so far. They shut down the gardens and quite a few of the young rowdy drunk folks decide they can now just head into the standing area where people have been standing for several hours already and push their way up to almost the front jumping and screaming caring about no one but themselves. Several altercations broke out for almost 1/2 hour before any security was seen. When the lead singer of Dead South told people not to fight the security finally came out of hiding to help out. By this time tensions had been rising for over an hour. Pro-Serve does not seem to be thing here. No re-entry also is posted but they let people come and go. No pot smoking in a public place is also not a rule here either. Nice event space but staff need to step up their game to ensure an enjoyable...

I was there for an event for the International Day for Persons with Disabilities and the lack of accessibility getting into the venue was both comical and confusing. First, Google maps brought us to the Access Calgary drop off zone which was accessible, but the parking lot wasn't big enough for the group and had a time limit shorter than the length of the event. Staff wasn't sure where we were supposed to go either and had to ask other staff and even print off a map and a special access code to get to the loading zone.. but we weren't allowed to park at the loading zone either so we had to unload then move our vehicles to a more long-term parking lot that was even further away from the building and walk through a bunch of snow and ice to get back to the hall. I'm sure this is just par for the course on campus, but it seemed like a strange choice of venue for a disability...