FANS HAVE COMPLAINED of chaotic scenes at Bruce Springsteen’s Croke Park concert last night, with long queues and confusing routes leading to some people missing part of the set.
Over 80,000 people, including high-profile fans Brad Pitt and Nick Jonas, filled the sold-out stadium, but the night wasn’t without its problems.
“It was like they’d never done a gig like this before.”
Fans complained of having to go long distances to use a toilet, with the women’s portaloos situated “miles away”.
One concert goer, who missed the first few songs due to the chaos said those working in the stadium “hadn’t a clue what was going on”.
She said the queues around Croke Park beforehand were “insane”.
A garda helicopter hovered above the stadium and surrounding area.
The whole thing was bananas.
“They just bottlenecked everybody. There didn’t seem to be any planning properly at all,” she said.
“Lack of communication was definitely an issue.”
Another concert-goer said: “There were enormous queues stretching through the streets around Croke Park and moving very slowly – people who had arrived for the concert much earlier than us were delayed getting in on time and there were plenty of people in the queue after us who wouldn’t have made it to the pitch or up to their seats till after eight.”
He had arrived for the concert at 7 but didn’t get to the pitch until 7.50pm.
“There seemed to be confusion among staff over what drinks were allowed into the stadium – some people were allowed bring drinks in, while others were stopped from doing so. But there were multiple stations inside, on the pitch, where staff members were selling cans of beer – so the rules on not bringing drink inside, where they were enforced, didn’t seem to make sense.”
Another fan said on the route there “no one seemed to know where anyone was meant to go”.
Workers operating on different information meant we had to enter the stadium and leave a few times.
“If you wanted to purchase food or drink outside the stadium, you had to rejoin the chaos queues as part of the one way system, despite entering from the stadium already, creating more traffic through a bottleneck.
“The only women’s toilets were on the other side of the queues, so you’d have to push through the crowds of people clamoring to get in, get to the portaloo, then rejoin the queue to get back into the stadium despite already passing through.”
Aiken Promotions has been asked for a comment.
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