So, I totally understand why a comic who's getting ready to release a new special on Netflix wouldn't want the audience to have access to their cell phones. However, there needs to be a better process for it. Tonight the BJCC used Yondr pouches to help ensure a cellphone/smartwatch/smart device-free zone to prevent the audience from recording and uploading videos of the live show. They did this by using the Yondr pouch. Said pouch is a bag that holds your smart device and gets locked closed by an employee before you enter the venue. The bag (with cellphone locked inside) is taken with you to your seat. This was particularly annoying at the BJCC because they do not allow purses/bags inside the facility. These pouches are NOT small. Leaving you to hold it awkwardly (too big for a pocket) and try to juggle the pouch (with your expensive phone inside), a beer, nachos, and your car keys all at the same time. If you're uncoordinated like me, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Also, we had to place our smart watches in pouches too. So add another awkwardly shaped pouch to the aforementioned mix of items to juggle.
If you need to answer a call, you have to exit the theater and get the pouch unlocked by a staff member to access your phone. God forbid someone in attendance have a medical emergency that requires immediate intervention. They'd die before finding someone to unlock it. If someone in the audience is discovered with a cellphone that has not been secured in a pouch, they will be "ejected" from the building. Not the showroom. The actual building.
At the end of the show, you have to locate a staff member to unlock the pouch for you. Which is insanity. They have to unlock each pouch individually and tonight there were 6,500 people seeing John Mulaney. It was a slow chaotic process getting out. There was no direction at the beginning of the process. No one told us where to go to have the pouches removed or where to return them. No one knew where to go. The crowd wasn't really moving anywhere after we got back out into the lobby/food/drink area. Like are we in line to leave the building, get our pouch unlocked, turn the pouch back in, go to the restroom, or for the merch table? No one knew. It was insane and took forever.
"Why not just leave them in the car" you ask? Well, the tickets were "live" tickets with a little blue line that ran across the barcode and could not be printed or screenshot. They had to be scanned live from the vendor's website on your mobile device.
I apologize for the rant, but dang that entire debacle was frustrating.
John Mulaney was great, by the way. I'd go see the show again tomorrow. read more