My 5-stars are for Lizzo. The ‘experience’ of the venue gets a 2/5. I’m still sad about it several days later.
The basics:
My family arrived with a fan sign that we hoped would get Lizzo’s attention. We were told, kindly, that we couldn’t bring it in. We were quickly referred to a customer experience supervisor, Robert, who told us the same (also kindly and with empathy). We resigned to leaving the sign in his care to pick up after the concert, assured that we were not the only ones who would be denied and that Lizzo’s security people had made the rule, that the venue was just following instructions. We were disappointed, but we understood; I had told my children that this was a possibility in advance.
Much to our further disappointment, we saw many other fans with signs inside the venue, several even larger than ours. Toward the end of the show, Lizzo stopped the show for a full 20 minutes specifically to read out signs and interact with the fans who had made them. Obviously we (especially my kids) were crushed.
After the show we went back to get our sign. Robert was there to meet us and apologized, telling us that obviously the rule was not applied evenly across the venue. We thanked him and left.
The details:
I had a last-minute opportunity to see Lizzo in October in Toronto. I was struck by her sweet gesture to call people out all over the venue and read out their signs, recognize the special efforts they had made to dress up, etc. It was such an amazing show, my one regret was that my kids weren’t with me. I didn’t even tell them I had gone because I felt bad.
When Lizzo’s Montreal date was announced, I was ecstatic. I had it all planned out - I would get front row 200-level tickets so that my little one (4ft 10) would be able to see without a struggle, and so we could make a cool sign that we could hold on our laps and not bother anyone behind us. This is what we had done when we came to see Mika last April, with no incident. I got the tickets at like 10:03am in the presale and gave them as their big Christmas present.
We started brainstorming our sign and bought materials. I didn’t tell them about Lizzo’s routine of actually recognizing signs in the show - I wanted to avoid disappointment if say, the Montreal show was different, or if signs weren’t allowed. It took us a few days after school to make it, and let me tell you, it was perfect. The first Montreal date was May the 4th, and Lizzo had just appeared on The Mandalorian. The kids did several drafts of a hand-drawn portrait of Lizzo as her character and the slogan was ‘May the 4th be with Lizzo’. It was personal, timely, and pretty funny. They worked so hard. When the show was rescheduled, we just added a little addendum; we were sure we couldn’t come up with anything more clever, even though it wasn’t as perfect - we were sure she would understand.
So back to the show. When we were stopped at the door, I explained everything to the staff about how I knew she would call out the signs, promising that we would only hold it up if she called for it, etc, but to no avail. We were told that it’s different for every show, that the artist’s people decide, and for this show there were no signs. I was surprised, but I didn’t want to make a big deal in front of my kids and I had to be a mom and turn it around to them so the wouldn’t be so sad about the wasted effort - I explained that hey, it’s too bad, we knew this was possible, and if no one’s allowed, no one’s allowed. So you can imagine the deep disappointment when a) plenty of other people were allowed signs and b) Lizzo did exactly the same as at the Toronto show and took time to have a personal interaction about each sign and feature it on the big screen.
My kids are fine, they are so grateful to have gone. But I wonder if you can recall a memory from their age about the utter thrill of connecting with a hero; this is what I wanted for them, and I did everything I could to try to make it happen. It is just the worst that a poorly applied policy prevented them from that experience. We love and appreciate Lizzo so much and they wanted to show her that, and in turn we are so sure she would have loved and appreciated what they made for her. It’s just a really bitter aspect to what was meant to be an entirely sweet experience.
I hope you will review this situation with the venue with an eye toward improving the experience for others in future. I have already written a similar message to both the Bell Centre and Evenko and received no response.