The symphony was wonderful. The musical selections were spot-on for the audience, and were beautifully performed. We had lawn seats, so we couldn't see much until the second half (once it got dark, we could see what was projected onto the big screens), but the sound quality was still very good.
My only complaints have to do with the venue itself. I called in advance to find out what we could bring in (specifically asking about coolers) and was told that usually they do not permit them, but that for this event they were bending those rules. Still all the usual - no aluminum, no glass, no alcohol. But between our parking place and the front gates, we were told in quite authoritarian terms by no less than 7 Shoreline employees that we would not be allowed through the gates with it and would just have to walk all the way back to our car to drop it back off. I even stopped halfway to the gates to call the Shoreline business office again, repeating my question and telling them that we were being told conflicting information by the guys outside. They said to just come to the business office (which is between the two front gates) and they'd take care of it. Sure enough, they did let us in with it, but the lack of communication to the people working security was startling.
Also, their process of getting cars out of the parking lots was atrocious. Rather than letting people leave as they reached their cars, which would have resulted in a steady (if heavy) flow of cars, they refused to allow ANYone to leave one parking lot until EVERYone from the preceding lot had left. As a result, we sat perfectly still for over an hour in our car waiting for The Powers That Be to permit the car at the front of the line to actually leave our lot. That's a horrendous waste of lots of people's time to start with. But with children in the car who were already going to be getting to bed late, it was completely unacceptable.
This is a lovely event and a wonderful, family-friendly way to celebrate Independence Day, but I do not think we will be coming back if it is held at Shoreline Amphitheatre again. The hassles simply outweighed the benefits for us. Perhaps if we didn't have kids, and it were just a group of adults, it would be different. We could just choose to stay in the lawn area for an extra hour afterwards prior to even starting to head toward our car in the first place. But with kids, there are too many easier celebration options available.
