I was looking forward to taking my father who was ...

I was looking forward to taking my father who was visiting to Dizzy's as a surprise since he loves jazz and it was a bossa nova night. I should have seen the signs when reserving on the website didn't work, left countless phone messages, emailed customer service who got back days later saying someone would contact me (they never did). Luckily, my boyfriend was able to snag reservations for the later show.

We arrived 30 minutes before the show and there is a big line for reservations and a small line for walk-ins. Before the show they explained pricing - $25 per person for reservations, $45 for walk-ins. That seemed reasonable. Perplexingly, we saw more walk-ins get inside with great seats. Our seats? All the way in the back, near the entrance door on a chair. The staff had to pull over a seat for my dad where there was no seat because it was literally at the entrance. For all the hassle I had gone through to make sure we had reservations, it was laughable that we were given the absolute most inconvenient seats for viewing, hearing, drinking and eating. Another incredibly irritating part of an already infuriating evening of the evening was witnessing people who were walk-ins stand by the door arguing to get in without reservations get spots, which were actually infinitely better than where we were sitting (for the 10th time...with reservations).

But the best (worst) part of the night is when the bill came. Astronomical. They had charged us for walk-ins. WE HAD MADE RESERVATIONS IN ADVANCE. The waitress's excuse: "Oh, all reservations are charged as walk-ins." But - didn't they just announce before the show differently? Outright lying and misleading patrons. I have the phone calls, emails, to back it up. Hell, I even went to Dizzy's front desk days before to make sure we had reservations. The space and music was wonderful but all in all, a very disheartening experience and I felt very sorry for my dad as I had wanted to this to be the big surprise NYC experience.