Des Moines Civic Center — Attraction in Des Moines

My daughter and I came for the Harry Potter Goblet of Fire concert, and the theater was not what I was expecting. When I first walked in, I was wondering where I was, Civic Center, or Principal Park, as this is stadium seating, not even movie theater seating. These seats are extremely uncomfortable, body on top of body, not acceptable, and totally not enjoyable. I love going to see and experience a live orchestra, but not like this. The seats we had, paid $35.00 to sit in a hard plastic seat on top of concrete. Most tickets were way overpriced at $100.00 or more????? This is an insane amount of money to pay to sit in an theater with stadium seats. Clearly had signs stating that no one will be able to enter while performance in progress, we had at least 2 that came over .45 minutes late, totally unacceptable and disrupted the entire row of seats. I wish I had looked inside the theater, as I would not have paid $35.00/ $70.00 for 2 tickets in an extremely 1970's style theater. Des Moines, you need to spend some of these $$$$ and upgrade and totally Remodel your theater. This is an embarrassment to your Symphony Orchestra who performs here. I will not return, and will not recommend. Bathrooms, not enough and no vending machines, concessions only drinks and alcohol. This event could have been so much more, and it just came up short, orchestra, A+, the...

If I could could zero stars I would. Went to see the Hamilton show and were told to leave before our tickets were even scanned all because I had my infant with me. We walk in the door and immediately employees are pointing at me and gesturing to each other about my infant being there. We approach the employees that were scanning tickets and we get stopped and told "She (my infant) can't be here but she is cute)." One employee then proceeds to check with the manager and the manager comes to tell me the same thing and then goes on to "(the RECOMMENDED age is 5 and over. Your child must be 5 or over and have a ticket to attend the show)" She then says the same thing the first employee says "so she can't be here but she's such a cutie". I wonder if they even know or care enough to know that plenty of other parents there brought children younger than 5 and lied about their age just to buy a ticket to avoid getting a sitter or even didn't have a sitter. Mind you, my sitter lives an hour away. I also have a friend who works stage crew who has told me that there have been countless times where she has seen mothers and their INFANTS at these shows and many other shows. Will never...

Visited the Des Moines Civic Center for the first time (recently located to the Des Moines area) in April 2022 for a concert by one of our favorite bands: Chicago. First of all, the concert blew us away, but that's another issue. We read online reviews that parking in the area for sold out shows can be limited, so we arrived in the area as suggested, and found a private parking lot (couldn't have held more than 20 cars) just south of the Center that was charging $10 for parking! So, we took a spot, walked across the street and about 50 yards to the Center.

Once inside, we found the doorway for our section easily, waited for the doors to be opened, and found our seats. Here's another thing. Had our tix on my phone, got to our seats, and found they were occupied. Found the nearest attendant, she came and straightened out the confusion for the other couple.

As for our seats. COMFORTABLE. PLENTY of leg room. We chose seats on the aisle, about half way up on the right side, and the sound was AMAZING. Needless to say, we came away very satisfied with our first experience at the Des Moines Civic Center.

Hope you...