Sarah Grant

Review of first direct arena

On arrival to the Neil Diamond concert last night,...

On arrival to the Neil Diamond concert last night, we were informed by an arena attendant that despite our disabled parking permit and a clearly disabled passenger with a ticket to the concert, we were unable to access the disabled car parking at the arena. Reason given that in the disabled parking there were no disabled spaces available. Having dropped our friend and his partner off at this blockade, I then had to park a 20 minute walk away in a now crowded multi storey. A distance too great for my disabled friend to manage after the concert. On my return to the stadium I walked past 8 empty disabled car park spaces where I had initially requested to park. This resulted in missing the start of the concert and 30 minutes at the end, as there was no way I could risk my friend having to stand and wait for me to get out of a busy car park which on previous occasions has taken 2 hours to get out of after a concert. Such a disappointing and frustrating example of a totally avoidable discrimination by the arena that also led to the limited attendance at a concert that I had been looking forward to.