The Family Arena — Attraction in Saint Charles

Two friends and I attended Cirque de Soleil's Chrystal at The Family Arena on Saturday afternoon. The first issue we encountered was with getting into the parking lot. We arrived at the arena 25 minutes prior to show-time. We got to our seats almost ten minutes after the show had begun because of the extremely inefficient system established for entering and paying for parking. At our entrance, traffic was backed up in both directions resulting in impeding the flow of cars that were not trying to enter the lot. Only two people were taking payments and issuing the cards that needed to be placed on the dashboard. Many drivers needed change, and some had questions. At one point, I timed a car ahead of us interacting with the lot attendant for just over two minutes. There has got to be a better way, and the Family Arena, or the company responsible for managing this must do better.

The poor lighting in the arena was a safety hazard. The show had begun when we arrived at our seats due to the parking lot fiasco, and there was no lighting on the steps or the sides of the aisle seats as used in many movie theaters. Numerous attendees were having difficulty finding their seats, and there were not enough ushers available to help. One of the ushers working in our section was not familiar enough with the seating arrangement and directed a group of six to the wrong seats; not long after, this group had to relocate when the ticket holders for those seats arrived. At this point, the ill-prepared usher stood on the steps with this family blocking the view of several rows of people while attempting to resolve the issue. A combination of five adults and children stood in our line of vision for such a long period of time that one of the attendees got up and told this usher she and her group had not seen any of the performance. This usher and the party trying to be seated moved immediately, but this should not have occurred in the first place. Additionally, this same family was then brought back to the end of our row, again causing so many of us not to be able to see the performance. The group this same usher had brought to the wrong seats had to move out, so the correct ticket holders for the seats could be seated. This caused us to miss another five minutes of the performance. It was all so frustrating and disappointing.

The show was light, enjoyable, family entertainment dampened by the inefficiency and lack of preparedness in the parking lot as well as in the arena. My rating is strictly in response to my experience with The Family Arena; it does not take the performance...

I was so excited to take my niece to the circus there. Unfortunately the whole experience was not what I expected. As soon as our tickets was scanned and we were walkin to our seats in section 103, and older white guy stopped us at the curtain and told us that "general admission is upstairs." We had to explain to him that our seats are rite next to the ring and not up in the nose bleed seats where general admission seats are located. Then the circus was fine but the selection of animals present was slim. They only had four elephants, five ponies and 2 horses. My niece wanted to see a tiger so she was a little disappointed. Then at intermission when the crowd was able to pay for elephant or pony rides, I watched as the young circus workers scan the line and only asked four different young black women for their tickets to show proof of payment which was an addition $15 pair ride. Rite in front of us was a white couple. The young worker simply smiled and walked past them and stopped at us and asked proof of purchase. Only after I recalled to him that he did not ask the white couple in front of us for their tickets nor did he ask the older white lady with the three kids for their tickets, did the young worker look down at the ground and walked away. The icing on the cake for me was as the intermission was ending and we was approaching our seats, it was another circus worker coming around randomly checking seats. However this time they didn't approach us. It was a white family to our left and a black family one row behind us. Of course they approached the black family and After checking all of their tickets the workers simply walked away. I was so disappointed in the circus staff that I packed my niece up and we left. We paid $200 for three tickets so that we could enjoy ourselves like everybody else not to be profiled. It really is sad that racism is still very much...

This place was just awful. They may be good at hosting a bunch of drunks going to a soccer game but when hosting a cheer competition leave much to be desired. Arrived at the entrance to the parking lot to pay ten dollars to park in a huge half empty lot. Was directed where to park but they didn’t mention that the first door you come to was not an entrance nor was the second or the third… they could have said there was only one entrance so you may as well drive all the way around and park by the open door. They charged ten dollars for parking and if you wanted to park in the big empty parking lot next to the only door that was opened then it cost another ten dollars. Getting in was a pain. It cost a ridiculous $35.00. There was a clear bag policy because I’m sure that cheer competitions have a huge problem with dads sneaking in alcohol. We had to throw away the boxes of candy that we brought to keep the little kids satisfied while the others were competing. No, there weren’t an adequate number of concession stands opened, just one and of course it was hi way robbery. There was an officer watching your every move even to the point that the made sure you held your baby right (maybe they had to much experience with girls getting on guys shoulders for the concerts) it was just a miserable place to be, always being corrected when they could have put up a few signs they even made sure to tell us that if we weren’t back in before the event ended then we wouldn’t be allowed back in. The facility staff ruined my whole stay in St...