Nickelback, Staind & Daughtry

Saturday was our concert at Hershey Park. We have seen Nickelback before and this time I was looking forward to Staind and Shelly was looking forward to seeing Daughtry.

We live about 1.5 hours from Hershey Park and the concert starting at 6:30 we left the house at 3pm thinking that should leave us plenty of time.

Nope.

Everything was fine through Harrisburg but the closer we got to Hershey the more the traffic. You expect a bit of traffic but it took up 2.5 hours to go the last 2 miles and were able to park our car. We got into the stadium at 7:30 and Staind was already playing.

When I buy my concert tickets I am online and logged into my Ticketmaster account when the tickets go on sale at 10am so I usually can get very close to the stage. This was general admission and I didn't realize that until after I had bought the tickets. I don't know if that would have made a difference or not since this was the only PA stop on the tour. As it was they were playing at a football stadium and it was sold out to about 30,000 fans.

I bought 2 beers for $12 and a t shirt for myself and Zachary for $70 and it was out to the concert area.

Now we have been to a few concerts...Saratoga, Montage Mountain, Pepsi Arena, NY State Fair, Syracuse War Memorial, Carrier Dome, etc etc but what happend after the concert Saturday left a lasting impression.

Never again will I go to Hershey Park to see a concert at the Stadium or most likely to any even at the stadium for that matter.

We left the concert during what was to be Nickelback's last song before their encores. We got to the tram and waited in line for that but all in all from the time we left the stadium to the time we were on the highway (less than 1 mile away) and heading home was 2 whole hours....and we left before the end of the concert and the fireworks. There still must have been 25,000 or so people behind us. We left the concert at 10 and made it home at 1:30am.

Traffic management getting out of the park and to the highway is completely unacceptable.

Even at the Carrier Dome for Elton John & Billy Joel (which was sold out) NY State Police had control of the traffic right from interstate 81 which runs right through Syracuse. Did we see anything like that in this instance, nope. We saw plenty of security but nothing, and I mean nothing until you were immediately in front of the park.

I don't recall any PA State Police until after the show. One was manually operating a traffic light at one intersection and one had a lane of highway blocked so traffic could exit an onramp easier.

You need some sort of control further out from the park when they are expecting large volumes of attendees to an event. I am suprised there weren't more accidents as some people lose all sense of rationale when they have to sit that long.

Never Again