Adventures In The Red Zone

For a band that I'm mostly ambivalent about, Last night's U2 concert at the Rogers Centre was very impressive. The spectacle of the multi-storey high construction that looked like the mechanical spider from Wild Wild West was certainly something to see. The music was excellent, and the band was in very good form. Also there was the fact of being a mere few feet from musical icons was very cool as well.

What we didn't find impressive was the Red Zone, the special area for people who paid 10-20% more for their tickets at auction, with the promise of special inscentives. All promotion material billed the Red Zone as a VIP section, with such perks as exclusive entrance, escorts to your seat by 'hostesses', exclusive food and drink vendor, exclusive merchandise kiosk and washrooms only for use by those with red zone wristbands.

Sounds great right? I can't speak for how the show will be set up in other venues, but at the Rogers Centre, here's where the whole thing went wrong.

The food and drink kiosk was a small table selling Stella and Keith's tallboys (and later they replaced Stella with Bud... as if) for $10 a piece, and bottled water. Pretty standard for the dome. Can't blame the promoter for that. But if you don't like beer, you were basically out of luck, you had to go all the way upstairs to get something else... which you aren't allowed to bring back to the Red Zone. And the food was Doritos and Maynard's candy, nothing really substantial. So far that's not much to complain about. Except that the whole operation shut down at 8:15, shortly before Snow Patrol finished their opening set, so Red Zone members had to go out to the other bar located outside of the red zone.

Next, we move onto the merchandise kiosk. It had less than 1/4 of the items that the other ones did. To my knowledge, it also shut down before the band took the stage.

As for seating, even though our tickets had seat numbers, there were no actual seats. There was a line of bench type things that were along the back fence of the enclosure, but they were folded up half way through Snow Patrol. Once again, not really a big thing, since who the hell sits down at a concert like this any way?

But perhaps most alarming about the supposed VIP area were the promised restroom facilities. We came down the ramp for the first time after passing through the red zone gate, and asked a security guard for the Red Zone washrooms. He looks sly and nodded to his left. There we saw to port-o-johns standing about 50 feet away. We chuckled a little and then said,' Yeah, no, really, where are they?"

We thought the guy was fucking with us. He said, "I'm the first to admit: I enjoy fucking with people, believe me, but seriously I'm not."

So basically the people who paid more for the tickets had to use the sub-standard rest facilities. This makes no sense. There was this guy standing at the gate when we were about to go in, and he looked like he was gonna shit himself, and was trying to convince the guard to let him use the port-o-john coz he really had to go, but the guard wasn't going to let him.

"It's right there," he pleaded, but he didn't have a wristband, so it was a no go. He clearly didn't get that We were VIPs and he wasn't, so the guard saw fit to explain it to him. "See, these guys are better than you, coz they paid extra for their tickets, so they get to use those, and you have to go upstairs." Sandra looked mortified. I just thought it was ridiculously amusing, since I really would have rather used the ones upstairs, if they weren't a five minute walk up the ramp and another 5 minutes back. I told the guy to consider himself lucky since at least if he went upstairs, there would be less of a lineup to use the facilities, and at least he could wash up afterward. He saw the logic in this and cheerfully went on his way.

Moreover, in the end, the security people were unable to prevent non-wristband-wearing concert goers from using the VIP shit stalls, and the notion of gender was thrown out the window. With the long lines, and the relative emergency levels of those standing in line, there were women using the mens one and vice versa, and they were absolutely disgusting by the time I had to use one, as one would expect from port-o-potties.

It seems whiny to be complaining about this, I know, considering that proceeds to the Red Zone tickets are going to AIDS research, but there are two problems with this whole scenario. I'm sure we can by now assume that not all the money is going to Africa. This is just a given: no charitible organization donates 100% of its intake to the cause: they have operating costs, staff to pay, and god knows what else. So being the cynic that I am, I can only surmise that this was a cash grab by Ticketmaster and its associates to jack up ticket prices for their own reasons, because they certainly didn't live up 100% to all of their promises of VIP treatment. It just seemed to me like they took peoples' money and did the bare minimum possible to follow through with their promises just to be able to say they provided them. But they weren't totally honest with the auction winners about the actual provisions would be.

So don't get me wrong, I had a great time at the show, and these things are not huge matters, and I'm not a priss when it comes to class or status or whatever. I was glad to be there at all, as I didn't pay for my ticket, to be quite honest with you: it was a gift. But I was not the only person witnessed expressing dissastisfaction over the So-called VIP treatment, and certainly not the the angriest. There were many more agressive complainers that I saw first hand.

So to anyone who is considering getting a Red Zone ticket for a future show, I suggest you just pay the general admission price, because you're still really close to the stage, closer in fact, and the 'perks' just aren't up to snuff. If it means that much to you, take the extra money you save NOT buying Red Zone tickets and donate it directly Red or another reputable AIDS charity, then go have a kick ass time at the show, because it's really something to see.

This isn't our video, this was taken from the front of the stage, and we were more to the right, but basically this captures our vantage point and experience pretty well.