Copper Box Arena — Attraction in London

Great team - decent venue - incompetent staff - expensive prices. Poor food n beverage options.

We took our boys for a family evening out to watch the London lions basketball team, £80 for tickets which cone with seat numbers. On arriving we asked to find our seats only to be informed by the ushers that we could "sit anywhere". THIS CAUSED CHAOS! initially it sounded good, but then inevitably we had later arrivals saying "we booked the seats you're in?!" To which we replied "we were told to sit anywhere", the poor family tried to find our old seats but saw they were also taken by other punters who'd been given the same awful advice. They came back to us after about an hour and pleaded to sit where they had purchased, I then relented (whilst still furious that it was the staff who had caused this issue) and moved my own family elsewhere, no doubt taking 4 other seats that someone else had reserved. It was a huge disappointment, and very unprofessional. I then when to get sone food and drink, and paid over £50 for 4 hotdogs and 4 drinks,(2 alcohol and 2 soft drinks), the rum and coke was a simple £1 250m can, but they were charging £6.90 for it! The queue was huge, and they clearly need more food and drink outlets in the venue. I then came back to finally sit down and watch some of the match which was good, and so was the halftime entertainment and running commentary. After half hour or so I went back to get a couple more drinks and found the queue to be about 50 people deep after waiting 20 mins and barely getting anywhere another useless member of the staff came by the queue telling is to "go up to the next level there's another bar up there's and it's empty" a few of us believed her (foolishly) and left our places in the queue to go upstairs, where we then found an even longer queue about 80 people deep. We were now stuck as we couldn't return to our old queue (only to rejoin at the back) and also didn't want to have to walk back into the arena with nothing having already waited about 25 mins by this stage. Most of us were raging at this point and felt completely helpless as we stood around waiting to pay for more overpriced rubbish. By the time I finally got back to my seat I managed to catch some of the 4th quarter and vowed never to come back until they get new staff and more bars. This could have been a really enjoyable day but the staff incompetence and unprofessional advice, pkus management prices/lack of bars ruined it. I'd spent over £150 been shuffled around from seat to seat, had to argue with innocent people, been misled and lied to by staff and waited in long queues to pay over...

The venue would be quite cool if it wasn’t for the complete lack of preparation and security standards when it came to Gorillaz’s concert. I went for three nights and the only time I could actually enjoy the concert was when sitting, but even then we had a member of staff being totally rude to my boyfriend for not hearing her speak at the “food and drinks” bit, and telling him “to pay attention next time” in a snarky tone after he apologised for not hearing her over the loud noises happening because of the concert starting.

Furthermore, there was almost a complete lack of security.

They would only check your bag and if you didn’t have one you could just run past, which can seem nice if you’re a good person. However, there isn’t only good people in this world and there was no further screening or even pat down for people apart from bag checking, meaning that someone could easily bring weapons and drugs in. Moreover, some people were able to sneak in weed and could be seen from near barricade smoking it and they even looked intoxicated, while the security didn’t do a proper effort to get them out: only one member of security told him off twice but still didn’t kick him out. People clearly intoxicated by drugs.

People were pushing to the point that last night a lot of people were crushed at the barricade, scratched and bruised. People being assaulted (hair pulling, scratching, and pushing people who were in front of them) over who was first in the queue while in the venue and the security, once again, looking and doing nothing.

The cherry on top was a guy being pulled out of the queue and being picked up to be put behind the front barricade because his friends were there. I never seen this happen anywhere and I have been to a lot of concerts and a fair share of festivals, even hardcore ones. Also, it makes me wonder how safe this last action was because anywhere else, if you’re pulled out, you have to go to the back because they won’t let you back in for safety reasons, such as risking to cause crowd crush to whoever is already close to the barricade, whoever will have to try and step back and whoever might risk to have a person dropped on their heads in case the security can’t hold the person up.

Best thing for this venue would either be sorting their security out both in the queue (where some middle aged people have threatened others in front of everybody and, even if reported, the venue once again did nothing to ensure the other people’s safety) and inside so that it will keep up with actual concerts safety needs, or to just stick to...

I joined the Better gym at Copperbox Arena in January and was very happy with it - a convenient changing room, great gym setup, and yoga classes included (which is something important to me). However, what was meant to be an ‘upgrade’ lasting a few days in March, turned into a never-ending chaos that only adds stress to your day. The ‘renovations’ were supposed to be over, yet every few days a new area of the gym gets flagged as ‘under construction’, with builders constantly there. They completely canceled a great yoga class which was extremely popular, for no reason whatsoever. Many of the ‘new’ machines seem to actually be older than the previous ones, they are more rusty. The treadmills are now facing a glass wall instead of a window like they used to, so you can’t enjoy the view anymore and have to try not to stare at other people on a treadmill, which is pretty awkward. There is now a single ‘adductor’+’abductor’ machine instead of two, which means double the time someone spends on it, how is that an upgrade? How is any of it an upgrade? The seemed to be nothing wrong with the changing room close to the entrance, yet it has been ‘under construction’ for around two weeks, if I’m not mistaken. Today it turned out that half the lockers upstairs are gone, and the lockers that were available at the time (I tried like 8) wouldn’t actually lock. These are just some of the examples of what feels like never-ending management mistakes. Despite all that causing some stress every time I’d go to the gym, I kept going and trying to not pay attention/hoping it would end soon. Yet today, seeing that the ‘upgrades’ are very much still not done, and even more areas of the gym are now ‘under construction’, my frustration reached its peak and I felt I had to leave without even finishing my workout. This is the only Better gym close to my home, and I loved it initially, but I’m not coming back. Thankfully, I have a student membership, so I will be switching gyms and will now have to take a bus to the other one - which will cost me more money and time. Unless that one will also be as chaotic, then I’ll have to switch to somewhere else. Changes just for the sake of changes are the worst thing you can...