We had heard that Cow Palace was not a great venue, and from social media posts, it seems that a…read morelot of it has to do with the staff and with the crowds.
Purchasing merch wasn't too bad, there was a trailer towards the back of the line and it was super quick. The staff were really nice in letting me hold the merch to see how sizing was.
We got here at around door opening time, and it took us probably about an hour to actually snake around and make it to the front. Along the way, there were a lot of people breaking down the gates to cut people AND us. Other people also took the opportunity to just push through when someone even opened the gates a bit to adjust it...it was actually really aggressive and rude behavior from ravers.
At the front, other ravers were also just bolting from the snaking line to the entrance. The whole time we were in line, I was seriously concerned for fights breaking out or a crowd crush because of course everyone was drunk or on drugs, and just pushing and cutting. Seems like the experience I had might have been more tame than ISOxo that just happened a few months before.
Once we got in, if you wanted to be on the floor level, you had to get a wristband. Messaging was confusing because I thought floor level wristbands were running low. Even here, ravers were trying to cut. It was so obnoxious. Staff seemed to not care or had no way of controlling them.
Lines to the bathroom were long, but moved fairly fast. We were trying to be strategic about the time we went to the bathroom during the early acts versus the main act (Gryffin).
Because it was so crowded, we didn't really have an opportunity to get food. Once you're in the floor level, there's opportunities to buy alcohol.
When we tried to get to the floor level, there were maybe 4-5 security people checking wristbands, but people were hopping over walls and such, so they couldn't really enforce people having wristbands. If you leave the floor to go to the bathroom, you can't easily walk back inside, so you had to endure going through the security screening for wristbands again. Despite security not being able to enforce wristbands, thankfully the floor was not completely full.
Something that I noticed on the floor was that all the people who were tall or had large fans obscuring the view for people behind them, were located towards the center line, so it was way better to be left or right of center. If you go towards the back, there's also way more space to stand and breathe, as well as get a better view.
The lights were amazing, sound was very good and loud, and the production was fantastic by Gryffin.
Leaving for us was fairly easy, since we booked it once the set was over. They had clear markings for exiting the parking lot. Unfortunately parking was ~$30-40. There wasn't really anyone to organize people when we entered, people just kinda zoomed in/cutting as well.
Overall, Gryffin had a great set but this venue is pretty bad as social media portrays it. To be honest, it's probably more of the crowds. Not sure if I'd really want to see any acts here in the future.