Dance shows have a bit of a bad reputation, as incidents in recent years have ranged from drug overdoses to violent crimes, and Instagram even blocked the #EDM hashtag. However, attendees of Disclosure's Toronto gig on Saturday (October 17) were faced with a rather different type of disaster: a chaotic coat check of epic proportions.
According to various reports, there was only a handful of staff working at Enercare Centre's coat check, and the thousands of attendees proved to be more than it could handle. The lengthy lines resulted in a mob of impatient concertgoers breaking into the gated-off coat check area and taking items directly off of the racks while police and security stood idly by.
This free-for-all resulted in many jackets and other items going missing, which was particularly unfortunate given that the temperature in Toronto dropped below freezing that night.
"People just started to break into the barricades they had set up for the coat check," Melanie Langevine told CityNews. "People were breaking in… people were crowd surfing in and nothing was happening."
At the bottom of this page, watch a six-minute video of the chaos posted on YouTube by Langevine.
Lots of people have contacted the promoters about missing items, leading Embrace to post the following message on Facebook:
We would like to sincerely apologize to those patrons affected by the coat check situation at the Disclosure event at Enercare Centre this past weekend.
We are working with our production team and the coat check operator to resolve this situation as quickly as possible and reunite people with their lost coats.
Anyone who has not contacted us yet should send an email to: info@coatconnexion.ca with a photo of their coat check ticket, a description and picture of their coat if possible. A member of our team will then personally contact each individual to discuss their concerns directly.
We appreciate your patience as we gather the necessary data and work through the process of contacting everyone.
The coat check also wasn't apparently the only inadequate facility at the Enercare Centre. Concertgoer Kaveh Baradaran told CityNews, "There were girls lining up to pee in a corner on the floor because they were told only one single stall bathroom was available to them." Fellow attendee Ashley Trevellin added that "many people, men and women, ended up urinating on the ground in a stairwell corner because the lines were too long."
The concert was in support of Disclosure's new album Caracal, and you can read Exclaim!'s review of the show here.
According to various reports, there was only a handful of staff working at Enercare Centre's coat check, and the thousands of attendees proved to be more than it could handle. The lengthy lines resulted in a mob of impatient concertgoers breaking into the gated-off coat check area and taking items directly off of the racks while police and security stood idly by.
This free-for-all resulted in many jackets and other items going missing, which was particularly unfortunate given that the temperature in Toronto dropped below freezing that night.
"People just started to break into the barricades they had set up for the coat check," Melanie Langevine told CityNews. "People were breaking in… people were crowd surfing in and nothing was happening."
At the bottom of this page, watch a six-minute video of the chaos posted on YouTube by Langevine.
Lots of people have contacted the promoters about missing items, leading Embrace to post the following message on Facebook:
We would like to sincerely apologize to those patrons affected by the coat check situation at the Disclosure event at Enercare Centre this past weekend.
We are working with our production team and the coat check operator to resolve this situation as quickly as possible and reunite people with their lost coats.
Anyone who has not contacted us yet should send an email to: info@coatconnexion.ca with a photo of their coat check ticket, a description and picture of their coat if possible. A member of our team will then personally contact each individual to discuss their concerns directly.
We appreciate your patience as we gather the necessary data and work through the process of contacting everyone.
The coat check also wasn't apparently the only inadequate facility at the Enercare Centre. Concertgoer Kaveh Baradaran told CityNews, "There were girls lining up to pee in a corner on the floor because they were told only one single stall bathroom was available to them." Fellow attendee Ashley Trevellin added that "many people, men and women, ended up urinating on the ground in a stairwell corner because the lines were too long."
The concert was in support of Disclosure's new album Caracal, and you can read Exclaim!'s review of the show here.