Paramount Theatre — Attraction in Cedar Rapids

It is a shame that I have to leave such a bad review for such a beautiful venue. This is a great place to see a concert as long as you don't mind the dirty practices of purchasing the tickets. I drive thousands of miles per year and spend a lot of money to take my daughter to concerts and we do everything the right way and whatever it takes to get first row, because for us it is either first row or nothing. Second row may as well be the last row for us! So for this particular concert the first opportunity to purchase tickets was with a presale code at 10:00 a.m. I apprehended the presale code and got in 10 minutes early to make sure I was the first person to purchase tickets. To my surprise, our tickets were in the second row. As soon as it opened up at 10:00 a.m. I noticed that the first row was already gone. I did want to give the benefit of the doubt because maybe the band reserved the row for friends and family, so I made a call to The Venue to inquire about this situation. The representative told me that the entire first row was purchased by one person at 9:47 a.m.! When I asked how that could possibly be since the first ability to purchase them was at 10:00 a.m., she responded by saying I don't know how they got away with that, they should not have been able to get away with that but they did. So this definitely seems like some dirty and or illegal practice went on, but an upstanding facility like the Paramount would surely not let that fly, so I sent a very detailed email with what happened asking for somebody to please contact me about this. That was 6 days ago and nothing but crickets! Those tickets would not have any problem at all selling in a legal fashion following the rules, so any honorable facility would revoke those tickets since they were purchased illegally. The worst part is that the one person who bought the entire front row is probably just going to sell all of those tickets for five times the price! On top of that, when they do I will probably buy them because I am very disappointed to have to tell my daughter that we are not in the first row. This may seem crazy to some people but for me and my daughter this is our number one thing that we do together. We have spent well over $1,000 for front row tickets many times so it is definitely worth it to us! I used to really like this facility but now it will forever have a bad taste left with me and I will spend the rest of my life making sure that everybody knows about it with every opportunity that I get! Thanks for ruining our time and letting dirty illegal practices go with no repercussions! And you know I'm right which is why you can't even have the courtesy of responding to my email! You should be ashamed of yourself...

Old building so no elevators and the seats are so small that you have zero leg room and with the size of people today, even the average person is feeling like a sardine. Anyone over the size of a 12 year old is going to be uncomfortable.

For the Zach Williams show, we could not understand what the female singer was saying. The instruments are overpowering vocals. Since my migraines are triggered by bright lights in my eyes, I really did not enjoy the bright lights flashing over the the audience throughout her song.

Many venues do not allow cell phones in the theater for proprietary reasons but also to protect the privacy of others who may not want to be included in your selfies. The women in front of us would not stop taking selfies and including us. Very inconsiderate.

They announced that everyone should keep their cell phones on and keep checking to see if they won something. What? Can't we just enjoy the concert and not have thousands of cell phone lights on all the time?

To make matters worse, I have asthma. Fog that comes from fog machines is not safe for asthmatics. Maybe that is why the woman behind me kept coughing?

On top of that - not the fault of anyone working the show or the theater but these two women who sat in front of us had SO MUCH perfume on that even after getting home, we can still smell it. It was really overwhelming and as you can guess, it caused an asthma attack. Yes, perfumes will cause an asthma attack in the people around you so think twice before you bathe yourselves in it.

Then the father and mother in a family of 4 next to us would not let us out when we tried to leave. The whole place was just told to stand so it was not such a big deal. Their kids kept telling them we wanted to get out but they refused to move. I had to lean over to tell the father I was having an asthma attack and had to get out. Then the mother was refusing to move and her son told her I was having an emergency.

We spent a lot of money hoping to enjoy a great concert but this was incredibly disappointing. They stopped us on the way out to ask why we were leaving and the manager, I am assuming offered a seat way in the back which would have meant I had to climb all those stairs again with a bad knee. We were just done. Too many things went wrong and we lost the joy about...

We attended the Ashley McBryde concert tonight. We were looking forward to the experience of a smaller venue. It’s a beautiful facility that is well planned out for selling refreshments, etc. Everyone was standing for the majority of the main concert, which I wasn’t expecting in that venue, but that’s fine. My daughter has special needs and can’t stand that long, so we sat through the first 45 minutes, then decided to leave. We had hoped to be able to catch a few minutes of the concert by standing in the back on our way out. An usher asked if we needed anything and I told him what we were doing and he was fine with it. A female usher came over, he told her what we were doing, and a minute later she came and told us we couldn’t stand there. Why?? We weren’t in front of anyone, we just wanted to catch a few minutes of the concert without having to look at someone’s backside. The gentleman followed us out, apologized and suggested another spot where we could stand, but by then I was upset and ready to leave. I appreciate his kindness, however the female usher had no compassion, which was very upsetting. It’s left me hesitant to attend further events with my daughter at this particular venue. ...