Fantastic Festival with Awful Date Change
by Primus202 on 10/16/15Shoreline Amphitheatre - Mountain ViewRating: 4 out of 5This was my second Oddball and I still loved attending. I was on the lawn this year, instead of getting seats, since I went with a bigger group. I would recommend getting seats if you can. They're not that much more pricey and you do get a much better view. However if you're probably going to be watching the jumbotrons mainly either way so do as you will.
I liked the line up a bit better last year, mainly because I knew more of the comedians though no one was bad this year. However I did discover a few new acts I'll have to check out this year. All in all everyone was still fantastic. However I had two major gripes with the festival:
This year they changed the date a few weeks out from a Saturday to a Tuesday. Not only was this not enough time for many of my friends to adjust their schedules but that's also just a massive change. This festival can run pretty late and you can get there fairly early if you want. Changing it to a weekday like that was unacceptable though I'm glad they apparently made it easy to get refunds.
Secondly traffic management. Shoreline needs much better roads for these massive shows. Thousands of cars converging on these business park roads does not work. Getting in is ok but not great and could definitely benefit from better signage and more lanes. Getting out was a nightmare. It took us nearly an hour just to get out of our parking lot. It wasn't until a policeman came by and told us of another, unmarked, exit in the center of the lot that we managed to escape. And that took us on a labyrinthine route along maintenance roads and office car lots before finally dumping us onto the highway. And we were the lucky ones! I believe we were funneled into an overflow exit while many had to wait along the main roads to the highway. Please sort this out next year!
Still a great festival, you'll never laugh so hard in one night in your life.