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| - I'm not against older venues, or even tiny venues. If it's a good time and a good show, I'm a happy camper - many good nights spent at Neighborhood Theatre or Evening Muse, and I'll even go to Amos' if I have to. Ovens is older, less classy, more high school auditorium feel, and generally not great sound in some sections. Whatever! I'll forgive all that. You can still get 4 stars.
Where they lose the other two is on a few points - first, location. Independence, that highway that is so fun to navigate. Try to find a place to eat or drink before or after, and you'll be stuck pulling U-turns on Independence and end up late for the show. Not their fault, right? Sure, maybe they could coax a diner to setup nearby, heck even the uptown ampitheater has that...but still, you have a shot at 4 stars.
Parking is the nail in the coffin. Oh my god. If you attend a show at so many other venues - Knight theater, Belk, Time Warner Cable Arena, anything in Noda - you don't have to worry about parking, you can park somewhere super close for $5, or just take the train, or even park a third of a mile away for free and just have a nice district to walk through. Not at Ovens! This out-of-the-way stepchild charges $8 or $10, and they do it in the most asinine way - by having one guy slowly collect cash, and dish out change, while 50 to 100 cars pile up behind waiting for their turn.
Roughly 95% of people attending drive there and park there. Why not add parking to the ticket cost? Eliminate this stupidity? I don't pay parking at Uptown Ampitheater, and heck that's like 40 years newer. I don't pay parking at the PNC Music Pavilion. I think the only other place that charges parking is Neighborhood Theatre, and you can literally park on the street for free, within 2 minutes in any direction, any time. And what the hell, tickets to those shows are gonna be about 10% the cost of Ovens shows, so a measly $5 with no backed up line is fine.
Bottom line - when you have a venue that seats 2400, and you are expecting ~1000 cars all arriving in the same 40-minute span, then you need something that gets through 25 a minute in order to process inbound traffic effectively. That's elementary school math right there. A few older gentlemen fumbling slowly with $1 bills is not meeting this minimum requirement. Figure it out, Ovens. Step into this century.
So after that frustration, Ovens could STILL be a 3-star place, but you have a tiny, ill-conceived lobby. You have bathrooms that are awkwardly located and bunch up into huge lines - for the MEN's room. I had never waited in line 15 minutes for a men's urinal before. Want a drink? Good luck! Any show that draws a decent crowd means 5 lines for concessions, and if you are trying to get it during intermission, unless you are one of the first 6 in line, you will be empty handed by the time the lights flicker and it is time to resume. Slow, understaffed, inefficient - kind of astounding, when you consider they could be making lots of money there, right??
It's like they seat 2400 but really are prepped for ~1000 max. You start pushing that upper limit and Ovens just cracks under the pressure, in a way that no other Charlotte venue does. I think it is OK to see a big name you really want to see if there's no other option, and comedy acts and maybe even some musicals are OK as well, since they will be lower draw. Otherwise, you might be setting yourself up for the perfect storm of inefficient parking, bathroom delays, concession unavailability, close seating, old look and feel, sound issues in some parts of the room, and a figurative desert with no culture or neighborhood or food or drink anywhere decently close by.
If you are trying to make a romantic night of it, then you have a bit of work to do. Best of luck!
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