Hidden at Downtex Mill — Attraction in Manchester

This review is not intended to drive business away from Hidden, just my personal experience.

I previously tried to attend the club some time ago to watch the Zenker Brothers but the event was cancelled hours before, leaving us without plans. Since then I hadn't made any effort to go to Hidden. My friends & I were looking for an event to celebrate my birthday, with little to choose from we took a chance on the Hidden Forest PT3 event, advertised as running from 4pm till 4am with local DJ's playing house & techno (though it turned out to be more house and tech-house). We booked our return transport as no public transport will have been running at 4am on Bank Holiday Monday.

We took trains from various places around Lancashire & upon arriving in Manchester we saw a social media post from Hidden stating the doors wouldn't open until 5pm as opposed to the 4pm advertised. We asked the bar staff to check our coats, they told us another coat room would be opening, we waited for around 45 mins but it didn't open, or for the rest of the night. Then we saw people checking their coats at the same bar we'd asked, we tried again & this time they took our coats. We ordered some drinks, £4-£4.50 for a WARM can of beer & took a walk around the club, its a pretty good space, the void sound system installed is good, the outside courtyard area is decent as are the dance floor spaces. I'm a pretty experienced techno and house enthusiast, I've been to Berghain many times, Tresor, Trouw, Fabric, Space amongst many other great clubs, so...

We began to relax & enjoy ourselves... We made friends with another party, it appeared one of them had some substances which (granted due to the door policy) they probably shouldn't have had on them, or should've been a more discreet about using them. A member of the door staff spotted this, a conversation took place, I noticed him hand something over which I presumed were the substances. After the security person walked away I asked what happened... "he told me, give me 20 quid and I won't kick you out"... "So I just gave him what money I had left".

As it approached 3am I stepped out to call our taxi to pick us up for 4am as instructed, I returned inside & noticed the lights in the club were turned on. There were notices behind the bar stating that last drink orders would be at 3am, I presumed it was just a reminder to customers to order their final drinks before the bar closed, so we ordered a few to see us through until the end of the night. The music began to wind down, the security staff began to clear the toilets and smoking areas. The bar staff (who'd clearly been taking substances) were still taking money from customers for drinks. We were puzzled as to what was happening, the event was clearly advertised as ending at 4am. We had no other choice other than to collect our coats, take our drinks we'd just purchased out on to the street & wait for an hour in Manchester for our taxi service to take us back to Wigan, Preston & Blackburn. Had this happened in winter it could have been far less pleasant or even dangerous, there is nowhere close by to take shelter & keep warm.

Manchester needs good clubs but it also needs clubs that treat customers with respect. Not to rip them off for warm drinks, steal 2 hours of an event from them & certainly not to bully & bribe them. The following day Hidden posted on Instagram about the event, a friend of mine questioned their 3am closing... They deleted his question. Later, I asked politely on twitter for an explanation, twice in fact, without response though I did notice that they were eager to retweet positive messages about the event. Earlier that weekend I'd been to the White Hotel, a few hundred yards away. Their drinks were half the price, the space is great and is open much later. Later this year they have DVS1 playing the same night as Jeff Mills at Hidden... This experience certainly made it an easy choice for me. The people of Manchester & North West have a great history in rave culture and its customers deserve to be treated...

Went here for Teletech. I had a good night because I loved all of the DJs playing. But i had some criticisms of the venue. It felt like it was totally over filled. There was so many people everywhere. The line for the bar and toilets was so long. People were queueing for the toilets for over 40 minutes at one point. Even queuing to go through the doorways or up the stairs. I only saw about 5 staff the whole night which was totally out of proportion to the amount of people. The security didn’t search me at all. Didn’t get pat down and the guy said my bag was too big to search so he just let me take it in. There was so many people being sick, or passed out, from over doing it. Kind of a bad vibe and it was worrying because of how little staff there was to help them. The sound system was very loud which i like, and very loud bass. Not as clear as you’d want but still impactful. Drinks were so expensive, £17.50 for a Red Stripe and a Vodka Coke which i thought was insane. Lockers have to be booked in advance online for £6, they are really small and there is only like 30 they were all taken up really quickly. I don’t know if i’d go to this venue again, unless it was a really good lineup. Travelled three hours for it and was just too busy...

NYE: Could of been a great night if it weren't for the staff. Arrived 3 minutes late (WITH TICKETS!!) due to an uber cancelling,there was still people queuing however they would not let just join the queue as we were 3 minutes late, this was on new years eve as well, over £80 spent on travel and tickets. Was my first time so was looking forward to it. Security guards were smug and finding it funny that our new years had been ruined, a guy next to me asked for a certain security guards name and badge number due to his behavior, the security guards response was to put his middle finger in the customers face. With over 10 minutes of talking politely to the security guards to let us in, as we had pre paid tickets, there was still people queuing in the line!!! at 11:40, so it would of made no difference if we ( around 10 members of the public at this time) had joined that queue. We couldn't get into anywhere else in Manchester as we had only got tickets for that event so nye was ruined, really shocking customer service, wont...