Dicken's Opera House

Wow! Just WOW! My youngest was invited to a Birthday party breakfast with.... SANTA! That's right, Santa Claus! Carla (momma of the birthday girl) did a fantastic job in arranging a very special breakfast brought to us my Dickens Tavern. There was Mickey Mouse pancakes, scrambled eggs plain and with cheese, potatoes, bacon and biscuits in gravy! Not to mention a fruit tray, whipped cream and sprinkles to put on the pancakes! The adults were able to access the bar for Blood Mary's & Mamosas! What a true gift for Christmas!Happy 5th Birthday, Peachy! And thank you Dickens for allowing 20+ preschools to run around wild! Santa, it was extra special for you to be there and make all of our little ones smile!Again, nice job Dickens for hosting such a great Sunday morning!

Well I see why the place gets 3.5 stars and no one was really here at prime dinner hour. Not a lot of g-free options. Ordered the cherry glaze salmon and the salmon was fishy and dry and the sauce super sweet. Wine was average as well at $22 for a 9 ounce poor. Live music and patio were nice. Service decent but won't be back as I require better food when I spend money eating out.

This review is for the opera house and not the dining room. This could be a great venue. I have seen at least 5 local bands here and it is always the same thing - you must get there early and wait in line in a fire hazard stairway with rude employees pushing through. Then when you get in expect all the good tables saved by the staff for friends. Take care not to get in the way of inattentive servers at the bar or the bartender will yell at you and you will probably not get a drink all night. Service is slow so the best tip is to double your order.Sound engineering is inconsistent but usually over driven and loud. Sometimes they are spot on and other times it is so bad it detracts from the performances. The dance floor is big and usually crowded. If you get a seat along the dance floor you will likely wear your drink home. The room is beautiful and the talent is usually superb. Too bad the venue owners don't ensure a proper size crowd with appropriate service levels. I would pay a lot more to loose the circus atmosphere and hear (read properly amplified and mixed) band with comfortable room on the dance floor and attentive service. They have turned what should be a nice venue for class acts into a nightclub type atmosphere. Too bad. PS. Reserve seating would be nice so you can loose the stairway craziness and long waits for bad tables.

Beyond awful. And it's not just me. Read all the other one star reviews.It's hard to know where to start, there's so much bad here. The most important thing is the sound. The singers are unintelligible. It's not their mikes. The acoustics are just awful. And the venue knows it - they've installed dozens of acoustic panels; and the sound is still terrible. The people sitting behind us made the exact same comment we did.How about the food? The portions are tiny. Worse, my wife's Korean chicken sandwich was inedible. I mean that in the most literal sense: we simply couldn't chew through this "chicken". Meow?Soggy fries. Soggy salad. Gross food.The service stank. Two waitstaff for 200 people? GTF outta here. They had no idea whose food was whose. Wrong orders. No setups. Not even a napkin.I swear it was colder inside than out. I have no idea how they managed that one.Trust me. Trust the other reviews. DON'T GO. This venue SUUUUUCKS.

Beware of using a credit/debit card here. There may be some mysterious extra charges on your account from your visit. I reached out and no one returned my communication to them.I 100% wouldn't return due to this. Maybe not the greatest option for service when that location is a revolving door of owners and businesses.

We booked this venue for our performance. On the day of the event, we were given no sound or light support, to which the owner blamed us continuously and have continued to do so in response to other patrons' reviews. This caused us to try and get the sound working ourselves on a sound system that is completely broken. They have also continued to insist that the system is not broken, though a different performance earlier that week was delayed by 2 hours due to the state of the system, and they had their own professional roadies to handle the sound. They reported a system that is unfit for professional use in its current state.What followed was the most humiliating performance as the owner walked out as soon as the show began, leaving us playing sound though one speaker in pitch dark aside for the spotlight. We weren't even shown how to bring up the house lights for intermission. We were delayed by half an hour, during which time some attendees left. During this delay, damage to the sound system was coming though at hearing damaging volume while we were running sound tests.We ran the same show at a different venue a few weeks prior and had no such issues. It is clear this is a fault of the venue and it's management. They fact they did not deliver on providing us with a functional venue and have continued to be rude and accusatory shows a frankly impressive level of unprofessionalism.Additionally, I spoke to attendees and they relayed that the waitstaff had no idea what kind of refreshments were being provided. That same waitstaff talked so loudly over the show, I could hear them from beside the stage on the other side of the room. The performers could hear them on stage while speaking.About half of the attendees left before the show ended. It was one of the most stressful and humiliating experiences I have had with any business. It is clear that the owners would like to blame us rather than take any responsibility for their failings. They have a non-funtional venue, extremely overpriced food, and undertrained and underpaid staff.There is a very good reason this venue has as many negative reviews as it does. I urge you to not attend or book this venue to save yourself a world of trouble.

**I would not recommend either booking your event with Dickens Opera House or attending one put on by them.** I booked them for our family event (elopement party/family gathering), and they were fantastic at first. The sales person was incredibly responsive, helping me determine what kind of contract I wanted to sign (just venue/drinks, venue/full dinner, etc). She was incredibly flexible when I told her that we hadn't decided on catering yet and let me know that we could add that later or go with an outside source. She also talked me through the open bar process as the alcohol list and an entirely open bar was a must-have for my father (who was paying). She provided the alcohol list, added "open bar" to the contract, and away we went. After I signed the original contract, that is where communication went downhill. I didn't hear from them for months, even after reaching out. My sister and I tried to schedule calls with them multiple times to either be ignored or put off. When we finally did a get a call to start working out the details of the party, we were told that 5-6 weeks before the party a "Captain" would get assigned and they would take care of these kinds of details. Ok, we weren't thrilled with that as my sister was going to be out of the country in that time frame, but we went with it. Once a Captain was assigned, I went to a walk through with him and we talked through a lot of the details. I asked for an updated alcohol list, which he provided, and we talked through a few smaller aspects of the party. I asked for a wine tasting, as the contract listed "house wines", and I wanted to ensure the house wines were something worth drinking. If they weren't, then we would've paid extra for a different selection. This is where things really got rocky. First, the sales woman informed me that they no longer do wine tastings. This was very upsetting, as we discussed this early on in the process. After several weeks of back and forth, they finally agreed to do one (which I then paid extra for). In addition to that, our captain e-mailed me a handful of times, and then stopped responding to emails. Even the email I sent asking him point blank if he was still our Captain. It is now a month post party and I still don't even know if this man is alive, his sudden absence has never been addressed either by our sales person or the owners of the venue. In addition to that, we had decided to go with an outside caterer. The sales woman pretty rudely informed us that our caterers job was to drop the food off and leave, that she was not to stay at all. That took several weeks of back and forth in order to her to understand that our caterer was in fact staying for the party. She eventually relented. Next, we couldn't get an actual response to the changes we wanted to make to the floor plan even though we spoke to them several times about it. In fact, the floor plan was wrong the day of the party and my sister had to have them fix it when she arrived a few hours before. The sales women repeatedly asked for information that had already been provided, implying that she was not taking any notes or paying any attention to our event at all. It was absolute chaos from the moment we signed the contract until even today, a month after the party. We finally arrived at party day, and my sister arrives at the venue. The tables are set up such that there is no dance floor (I made it very clear that dancing was the whole point of the party), the floor is filthy, and our Captain is nowhere to be seen. One of the owners is there and informs my sister that she is the "captain" for the night and we continue on. The catering was amazing, our DJ was spectacular, and suddenly our open bar is now only open for some level of beverages, and not for the rest (even though the liquor list that was provided to me 3 separate times had no such tiers called out), the owner tried to close the bar at 9 pm (even though the contract clearly states 1130), and then couldn't find the contract when we confronted her about closing the bar early after several folks left because they thought the party was ending. After we showed her our signed version of the contract she flipped out about how their policy is to close it after 4 hours and they were going to lose so much money. She then agreed to keep the bar open, but continued to charge people for drinks that they suddenly deemed were not included in the contract. In addition to that, they began to clean up around the guests at 1030 pm, even going so far as to remove drinks people were still drinking as they were dancing. By the time 11 pm came around the venue had cleaned up most of the tables and made it incredibly clear that we were no longer welcome. My sister came to me at 11 and asked if we could compromise and leave at 1130 rather than at our contract midnight time. Honestly, by this point in time I was tired of the drama and said ok, but I was incredibly annoyed. The owners are still ignoring us.

The entertainment was good for the comedy night I attended but the venue does not offer table service. With no waitstaff, you have to stand in line to get drinks and then get in yet another line to get food. Everything comes in disposable containers--paper, plastic, cans and bottles. The lines for refreshments were long and many people were still standing in line when the show started. Food and beverage choices were very limited. Seating was general admission, which means you have to have someone save your seats while you go stand in line for your drinks and food. Also, the show was very short, especially considering the price of tickets at $20 each (I think the entire show was just under an hour and a half).

$50 for VIP seating... won't do that again! Doors open at 7, so we went down stairs to get a glass of wine, came back up.. and no glass allowed. The line was so backed up because of their ticket checkin process. Didn't have table service for the first half hour. Went to the kitchen and asked if someone was able to come to our table, and the gal was very defensive saying she just got there and we'll have to wait til she gets to us... even tho we paid extra for VIP seating. As I walked away, she totally went off with her foul mouth to the kitchen staff about how F'in entitled we are.... not impressed. I went to the bar and ordered 2 house cabernets that were served in 4 oz plastic cups and one vodka soda (house vodka, also in a plastic cup... $40. Later, we went up for some water, and it was only bottled water ... for purchase! Last straw, another round of drinks and what we thought was a chef board, was something a 5 year old could have put together in paper tray, $78. And what's with the 3% fee added for the kitchen staff.... that crap ended with Covid, and it's certainly not making the service any better. Pictures show what we got, and how they advertise it on the website. The band was very good, but if you want to see the Long Run, don't see them here.

Where is my review from yesterday? All I see here is reviews from the previous owners of the Dickens Opera House. Yes it used to be a good place. Now it is super overpriced! Services is terrible! Got a beet salad. Upstairs served in a cardboard box. $15 plus tax and tip for, less than 2 ounces of salad, you probably don't believe me, but it was under 2 ounces with no dressing! It had two slices of beet very thin slices! Virgin Mary was $13.50! Yes, no alcohol and $13.50.