Chesterfield Amphitheater — Local services in Chesterfield

Like most of Chesterfield, poorly designed and overly expensive. They spent seven million dollars for a bunch of folding chairs on a hill with only one entrance and woefully inadequate parking.

Doors opened at 6:30, but the line to get in stretched out almost to August Hill Dr, and it took us almost an hour to get in despite arriving after they opened the gate. We would've arrived well before then, but the city plopped this "amphitheater" in the middle of a park and simply relied on the existing parking infrastructure to handle the visitor volume. It was a nightmare to find somewhere to park (a real shame there's not a dead mall with an adequate and vacant parking lot right across the street).

Once in, we found our reserved "seats" were simply folding chairs that one would find in an outdoor funeral service arranged in cramped rows. Each tier of the theater held three rows, so two thirds of the reserved seating section (including us) is unable to see much of the stage. Someone forgot to tell the engineers that in a traditional amphitheater, each row gets a dedicated tier. The seats are also not numbered, so you have to count or guess where you're sitting. The seats are so close together that I had to sit awkwardly as to avoid rubbing against the stranger to my left, so I had a bit of back pain by the end of the show. Since we had reserved seating, I cannot speak to the quality of the GA lawn seating area, but it must not be that great, as many from that area flooded forth into the aisles further ahead. Were it not an outdoor venue, some of the aisles would have been a fire hazard, and the venue staff cared not at all. Nor did they care about the shirtless drunk person running around atop the tier dividers made of large concrete stones. I saw at least three opportunities where they approached him, but then shrugged and backed away as he ran off, likely because they aren't paid enough to deal with manners like that.

In short, I paid $60 a seat to deal with Riverport levels of traffic, miss the opening act (that I was actually interested in) because they decided one entrance for a 4,000 person capacity venue was enough, then sat awkwardly in a cheap and uncomfortable Wal-Mart folding chair to listen to show as I could not see any appreciable amount of the stage throughout the night.

If the still living members of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Who formed a super group and I was given free tickets, I would not go if the show was at Chesterfield Amphitheater. I would consider it a mercy to the people with...

I've given the venue several days to respond to my email (or even give me a call) to discuss my experience but have heard nothing yet. So I'll just post the main body of the message to sum up what happened and why I'm upset with the treatment I received. Hopefully this isn't the norm and hopefully it was just an honest mistake or misunderstanding but that doesn't change the fact that I had a bad experience and the staff needs better training on how to handle these larger events.

"I was in attendance at tonight’s concert and I was told by security 'You have to go!' with no reason given.

I was caught off guard and complied because I didn’t know how to respond.

Before I left, I spoke to another security person who told me that it was due to the color of my wristband (green). He then took me to another row and the seat I allegedly was supposed to be in was occupied, so he made the person move. Ultimately I gave up the seat and left because something didn’t seem right.

Here’s the crux of the issue. My seat assignment was Row A, Seat 1 (see attached ticket photo). When I arrived at the venue, one staff member told me my seat was all the way down at the 'bottom,' so that’s where I went. Also, the row that I was in (the front row) was designated 'A' when coming from the side.

I was in that seat for the entirety of 2 of the 3 sets and no one told me to move. Then early in Blues Traveler’s set, a security member said something to me. (I asked him to repeat it because I have a cognitive disability and can’t always hear conversations when there’s a lot of noise.) Then he said louder: 'I said, you have to GO!'

I’m not looking for trouble. I just want clarification on what my seat assignment was supposed to be (that I spent over $200 on several months ago).

I have a feeling that whether I was right or not to be in that seat, your staff needs lessons in better communication because I felt like I was being punished for something...

I recently stopped by to see Zach Byran live and this review has nothing to do with his show! Amazing was an understatement! This review targets the amphitheater/fairground staff who were very rude, unprofessional, and reckless. First off show was delayed by a storm which is totally understandable but then we were left in the dark for ages on a new start time. After about an hour PAST their announcement time I just gave up and ubered there to see if the concert was still on because I had driven almost 4 hours for this. I arrived and there was a line that went all around the property with no clear end. As I tried to find my way to the end of the line, event staff was no help just shouting at people and telling them get in line. Finally I made my way into a spot and we stood about an hour before these staff abandoned their line they had been shoving down all our throats for the past hour and just opened the gate. People took off running and the staff immediately lost control of everything. With the mud, rain, and water this could have been very dangerous! Then we finally get inside (paid for two VIP pit passes and no one was even checking tickets, we ended up standing next to some general admission people) after a bit we tried to go use the private VIP restroom to which the employee standing guard by it told us we could go to the other side of the park where the public toilets were. When I tried to show him my VIP pit tickets on my phone he said word for word "I don't care about a ticket" and walked off.

So to summarize all this, Zach Bryan was amazing and an experience I will never forget!..... My experience at Chesterfield fairgrounds though will be unforgettable for all the wrong reasons. Rude staff, lack of organization, and...