To the organisers of Auckland City Limits,
I don’t normally take to writing open letters in this fashion. I’m not really sure this will get the message across to you. So bear with me while I outline some points.
I was looking forward to this festival. The acts I saw were great. However, this is not about the acts. This is more about the lack of information regarding some organisational hiccups I wanted to bring to your attention. I’m just going to bullet point them here.
- It was not clear that we had to obtain a seperate ‘Over 18’ wristband as well as our wristband loaded with cash.
- We queued in the line for some drinks at the Golden Dawn bar for at least 25 minutes only to be told by the lovely barman we need to get verified. ‘Really sorry about that. We are an external service and as such we have no control on this. You can do that next door at the cashless booth just over there.’
- After waiting 10 minutes at the said Cashless Booth, were told that we had to go to to the guys at the entrance with the black t-shirts to get the armband
- They obliged with giving us a wristband. These were the same guys that were checking everyone had ID. At this point my enthusiasm for a beer had waned.
So, here are some points to feedback to you:
- There were at least five opportunities for various staff to verify / inform / check wristbands before festival goers queue up for a while.
- The cashless wristband technology has the capability to be loaded with could be ‘Verified Over 18’ tag, just like the guys on the gate had to do for us. The same wristband could also contain our ticket info too.
- Some clear signage explaining the need for a verified wristband would be great. Preferably at the main entrance. Some clarity on where this can be done would be useful too.
On a slightly different note regarding your free smartphone app. It would be great if you could have a version that did not rely on smartphone data for the main operation. I found it difficult to read some of the pages. Similarly the map relied on using the google Maps technology and therefore also needed data to work. There was a lack of signal due to too many festival goers using phones at the same time.
I am sure this is not the first instance of someone wanting to send feedback to you regarding aspects of this festival. I hope you can consider some of these issues and how they can be improved for the next time.
Regards
Malcolm