PPL Center — Attraction in Allentown

There is no shot that this venue should have this high of a rating lol. If you're rating it that way for the parking convenience and price, fine, but for concerts this place is a disaster, at least in my own experience.

Went for Godsmack, bought tickets from the PPL Center website as soon as they were out. Day comes, the traffic to actually get to the parking structure is awful due to how Allentown is laid out, took 30-35 mins to go like a half mile. Not laid out well for this.

Now for seats. The seats I bought were for a section that has folding chairs, so above regular seating, typically for handicapped folks/wheelchairs. Of course when buying the tickets, it said this nowhere (also the people sitting next to us were also not handicapped so there's that). This "row" only has 6 seats and is not listed clearly anywhere as the actual rows with in place seating stops at 18. I had NO IDEA how to find my seats. There was also NOBODY around to ask, no ushers, nothing. "Guest services" if you even want to call it this said "check with your usher" 3 times after being told all 3 times WE DONT HAVE AN USHER as if they're deaf I guess. A food services manager ended up finding our seats for us which they had to ask a handicap person in our seats to move which sucked but they were in the wrong place as well. The usher for the area finally showed up after the first act was finished and off and Nothing More was already playing.

After finally being seated and watching, here comes a security guard with this same handicap person and his wife who asks to see my tickets and goes "you're in the wrong section." When obviously I'm not. The security guard NEVER EVEN ASKED to see these peoples tickets until she realized I guess she couldn't read numbers and realized we were, in fact, in the correct seats.

So why 2 stars instead of 1? Because sitting with folding chairs is superior because we could move around and not have limited leg room because our seats were not in place. It gets 2 stars only through sheer coincidence that the seating arrangement was great due to their own incompetence. Worst venue experience I've ever had to get seated, I don't know how you dont have ushers helping people find seats. Won't see...

My family, which includes my wheelchair-bound father, and I went to the Penn State hockey game. This experience was not ADA-accommodating. First, when I tried to purchase 3 wheelchair-accessible tickets, they were not available. When I tried to buy two tickets, it cost $550. Fortunately, when I contacted Ticketmaster, they emailed me later that night stating that the venue could accommodate 2 companion and 1 handicap seats. Yay! I then purchased regular tickets. When I got to the box office, I was told that the woman who could help me was using the restroom, but she would be right back. I proceeded to wait. And wait. The security guard, who became familiar with my plight, signaled out the woman I was waiting for. She had a huge plate of food in her hands and completely ignored the security guard. The other woman working the Box Office took down my ticket information, and then gave me 3 tickets for the 200 level. Not realizing this was upstairs, I left the box office visibly upset. The woman I was waiting for was on break and proceeded to yell at me about it. It is terribly unprofessional for a staff member to engage in a screaming match with a customer because she is on break. Not only did she scream at me, but then she proceeded to make snide comments after I received my tickets. I have never been treated so poorly when trying to obtain ADA-accommodations. Actually, I've never been treated so poorly by a "customer service representative" in my life.

Fortunately, Frank the Supervisor saved the day. He was able to get us wonderful seats on the 100 level. He was so kind! Thank you,...

TL/DR: The facility is great, but they need to get their act together with regard to parking and traffic control. Let me start by saying that the facility itself is fantastic. Seats are comfortable, and the staff is efficient and friendly. Alas, I can not give 5 stars because the parking situation needs a ton of improvement. The biggest problem seems to be a lack of cooperation between the PPL Center and the City of Allentown. More boots on the ground traffic direction and better signage at the street level, indicating which parking facility is which. I had pre-paid for parking at the "orange" garage attached to the PPL facility as recommended. But being unfamiliar with the area, I initially went to the wrong parking garage. After getting back out onto the street, it took me nearly 40 minutes to go around the block due to a lack of traffic control. I saw an Allentown police officer standing on the corner watching cars cut one another off due to only seeing the tiny signs for event parking at the last minute. I finally arrived at the correct garage entrance and was given entry, only to learn that they had oversold the garage and that no spaces were left. The parking attendant told me that my pre-pay code could be honored at the neighboring garage, but the staff there informed me that this information was not correct because they were operated by a separate company. I then had to pay again for parking and arrived late for my event. I hope that going forward, they will implement a better system of accounting for prepaid parking and consider additional staff to help...