Portsmouth Guildhall — Restaurant in Portsmouth

Been here a few times to see both comedy & music acts. This last time was 3/25. When I booked tickets online I also booked parking for the Isambard brunell multi storey & a charcuterie board for eats before the show, everything was sent in emails containing QR codes. On parking in the Isambard brunell multi storey, you take the initial entry ticket & on arrival at the Guildhall you head towards the box office where they take the entry ticket, scan the QR code sent via email & give you your exit ticket to use at the barrier on exiting the car park, easy enough. I assume if you don't book parking online that you have to queue up at the car park machines to pay for your time parked once the show is over. There are concrete steps up to negotiate between car park & the Guildhall. The charcuterie board was for 6pm, again you have to show the QR code relating to this on arrival, queue separately to those who are not eating & once scanned are directed where to go to eat. Charcuterie board is meats, cheese, crackers, grapes, 1 drink per person, soft or alcohol & an ice cream in the interval which you have to go & collect. As the Guildhall isn't a huge arena, it's quite easy to locate your seats. In the interval you can utilise the bar or sweet stand or quickly browse an area of memorabilia. Nice venue. Be aware, Portsmouth now is a clean air zone so check your cars registration to see if it complies, mine does so I didn't have to pay a fee...

Went here for Comic Con. It was much bigger than I expected! However I didn't find it was as user friendly for disabled people as it should be. What I mean is, there are lifts and adaptions but they clearly aren't made with huge events like this in mind.

I had a toddler in a pushchair so needed ramps and lifts to access the other floors/get in and out of the building, however because of the amount of visitors it was a nightmare. Despite having 4 lifts none of them are big enough to fit more than 1 pushchair/wheelchair at a time meaning that we were all queuing for ages. I waited so long for the lift that on multiple occasions the other members of my party had to ring me to see if I was okay. I Felt selfish using the lift while disabled people waited so on a few occasions I felt compelled to repeatedly offer disabled people the lift because I didn't feel moral making them wait, despite having a grouchy toddler. At one point we even carried the buggy up and down the stairs! I also found that the layout of the stalls in the rooms made it next to impossible to take a pushchair/wheelchair round the tables, I was constantly running over toes and straight up crashing in to people. Although I had a good time the venue wasn't well suited to the event.

4 stars for being big and impressive, minus 1 star for being unsuitable for large...

A decent venue. We were there for a gig (a seated one). The seats are quite narrow and set close together and after a while can feel a little uncomfortable. Don't be alarmed if you feel the seats bouncing when people start tapping their feet :-) There is a bar inside, and a small concession stand selling sweets and soft drinks. Staff were lovely and friendly. Getting round was easy enough, there were multiple entry points to the main auditorium. It was good to see they have a wide stairlift for wheelchair users who want to use the upper stalls. There were several people attending who had mobility or sight issues and I didn't notice anyone having problems getting around. Getting out was, as expected, a bit of a crush, but it was well marshalled and only took a few minutes really. I would have given this 5 stars, but for the single narrow staircase outside the venue that leads to the multi-story car park, I would have thought the local council could have finally sorted that out than spend money on a giant TV. It took longer to get to those stairs than it did getting out of the venue. Once we were past that then getting to the car park, paying at the machine (do that before you go to your car) and finally getting back on the road took about 10 minutes in total -...