Darien Lake Performing Arts Center

I pretty much agree with the other reviewers:
1. Acoustics are weird at best
2. Parking is a NIGHTMARE... if you actually want to stay for the entire show, add about 2 hours to the end of your night. Otherwise, you have to leave when the encore starts.
3. Bathrooms are okay for the reserved sections, but terrible in the lawn and lots
4. Drinks are SO EXPENSIVE. So expensive. Like, could buy a bottle of liquor for the cost of one drink.

Also... the aisle guards don't control the people smoking / standing on chairs in front of you / throwing up unless you complain. I'm sorry, but I don't always feel like being a narc. Can you just do your job please?

I agree that if there were another venue around town, I would be there in a heartbeat. CMAC is way better and worth the drive when they get the artists.

I can say that I have seem many shows at Darien over the years and each time, it seems to have gone downhill. The last show I saw there was DMB this July. We paid for premiere parking (20 something!!) which got us closer to the gates, but not really by much and certainly didn't merit the price as there were two huge issues with that parking area:

1) we still had to wait about two hours or more to be let out which I'm sorry, really seems to defeat the purpose of paying extra for parking.

2) they had ONE port-o-potty for our lot, and two other lots to share!!!! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?! You've got thousands of people in a parking lot for hours on end, many of them growing more inebriated and belligerent with time and you give them one bathroom?! There were handicapped individuals waiting in the bathroom line for far too long because of this as well which isn't right.

You cannot bring in blankets, or water bottles (they want you to shell out an outrageous price for that), and the bathrooms were absolutely UNACCEPTABLE!!!! I'm not going to go into graphic detail but there were bodily fluids, and garbage everywhere. They let so many volunteers come in to dole out their over expensive beers, they can't sacrifice even one person to maintain the bathrooms at least to some extent??

Aside from the venue itself, I have to say that this year the crowd just seemed to get way younger. People were extremely rude, pushing and shoving and not saying excuse me. Leaving their trash EVERYWHERE! I have to say I find that a little ironic considering it was a Dave show, who promotes green living and such.

Overall I was very disgusted by the venue. I would never commend them to anyone and if it weren't for Dave shows, I'd probably never go there.

I strongly can suggest CMAC in Canandaguia, which is pretty much the exact opposite of Darien.

I've been to this venue many times, and each time have had the same type of experience-poor. I recently went for the DMB show; DMB was awesome, the venue not so great. If you have ever gone to a concert at SPAC or CMAC, then you know that there is just something wrong with the acoustics in this place. Some of the instruments were drowned out. Maybe because the shell is made out of vinyl.

We sat in the reserved seating which was tight, the rows are way to close. Every time someone needed to get out I thought I was getting a lap dance (not so fun when it is a 250 pound dude). Bathrooms were ok for reserved seating, a MESS for lawn. They ran out of $11 beer in reserved which forced us out with the unwashed masses (just kidding, I love the lawn).

As for parking, over 2 hours to get out of their "VIP" section.

Needs work, lots of work.