Riverbend Music Center

Have come to Riverbend many times for concerts and I love this venue. The shows are always great. The staff is always friendly and the venue is clean and enjoyable. I would have given it five stars up until now. However, for my latest show, Pitbull, the traffic getting out was just ridiculous. I have driven to Riverbend every time I've gone to a concert here, which has been about 10 times now, but never have I had to wait to get out of the venue over an hour. I have had to wait maybe 15 to 20 minutes or so but over an hour it's just crazy. I have heard others have this issue but thought maybe they came really late and we're at the very back end. However, it doesn't matter when you came because there is no good system set up with the cops, directing traffic. If they were directing it properly, there should be no reason that the lines would take this long. Even when concerts have been sold out I have never had this issue. Ben really needs to get a control of better parking and traffic management to and from the venue. Not only did I spend a ton of time getting out, but we spent about 30 minutes in standstill traffic trying to get into the venue as well. With all the experience they have with these concerts. They really should be a better way of opening up the exits, etc. many venues are this big and are able to do a better job so I hope Ben works on fixing this because I really do enjoy going to the concert, but this last experience I would be very careful to go to anything that I think is going to be crazy crowded. Like about this venue is the affordability of lawn tickets. It's all first come first serve so you could work your way into the crowd and get decent seats and views of the stage. I also love that they let you bring food into the menu because if you want to snag , good seats want to come early? You don't have to eat just eat ballpark type of food. You can grab food to go and then bring it in. I appreciate that they have water stations around (though I do wish it was chilled and not lukewarm parentheses. They are also very good at being efficient at the gates for security and scanning tickets. There is never a line which I love. I am also glad that they get a lot of very big artists into Cincinnati but they will need to figure out the parking traffic control.

Riverbend music center is an outdoor concert venue located on the banks of the Ohio river in Cincinnati, Ohio. Me, my oldest two daughters and some family friends attended a Sum 41/Simple Plan/The offspring concert here and we had a really good time. The event staff was plentiful for parking and get you situated. And the parking is free. From where we parked you walk through an old closed down tree park called Coney Island (abandoned theme park gave me horror movie vibes) and you walk through ticketing. The setup is a large stage with covered sit down seats with a massive artificial turf hill that is host for the general admission lawn seating. Behind the turf is a party deck that takes you to the bathrooms, vendors and merch booths. The entire setup is very well Maintained and very nice. Our seats were in the herbal admission lawn so we positioned ourselves in a good spot to view the stage and enjoyed the sum 41 and simple palm portions of the show. When to our surprise a worker came up and gave us floor seats int he covered area for the offspring portion of the concert. Those seats were amazing and I can see why people pay high dollar for them. The show itself was a blast and very entertaining. The stage and sound was setup for Great visuals and way to hear from anywhere. Overall we had a great time and this is a cool venue. It helped we had perfect 70Degree weather on a late august night. My only complaint would be after the show we went to merch booth to buy shirts. After waiting in line my daughter and her friend went to the bathroom at which point 3 different workers were telling me I couldn't wait. I told them she was a minor and I wasn't leaving her. Most understood but one lady was being pushy saying I need to tell her to hurry. So I had a few explicit words towards her until she decided she was done being a weirdo and moved on. But outside of that the rest of the actual event staff and officers were great and friendly.

Rivenbend was a pretty nice place for a great concert! Parking and leaving the parking lot was very organized.The one thing I didn't like is how expensive the concessions are! Very expensive for everything!

This is a great place to come if you:1. Are looking for an impossible venue for ingress/egress for parking and want to see cops and parking attendants standing around on their phones being completely useless to attendees;2. Are looking for a venue that's not ADA compliant if you happen to have a physical disability, or I don't know, a broken foot, with a handicapped card, but attendants shrug their shoulders, and direct you to the back of the 6th parking lot anyway;3. Need to smoke anywhere you'd like in everyone's faces, instead of a designated smoking area;4. Want to see other patrons literally peeing on the open street jumping out of cars on the way into the venue because they didn't anticipate a 1.5 hour gridlock;5. Oversold lawn seats, and nowhere to remotely stand or sit.After 20 years of trying this place for various concerts, I'm done. So over it. The absolute worst.

This venue cannot handle large crowds. We left before the end of the encore and it still took us 2 hours to exit an overflow parking field. Added to this, when we finally reached the empty main lot, there were numerous parking handlers directing traffic flow. However, no one in management thought to send support over to the overflow lot. We monitored the main lot traffic flow and while it was faster, it still moved at a snails pace. The adjacent casino lot was also at a standstill by the time we were able to make our way to a gate that was finally opened to allow more cars to exit the field. In reality, the poor traffic flow at Riverbend poses a hideous safety problem should there ever be an emergency.

After decades of doing live shows here they still can't figure out how to use enough cops to get us out of the parking lot in less than an hour and a half. Come on people figure it out!!!

I always enjoy concerts at Riverbend. This summer, I saw both the New Kids as well as the Jimmy Buffett tribute concert with lawn tickets to both. They were 2 completely different experiences. You kind of know what you are going to get with both. New Kids was a hot, sweaty mess but the staff did a great job of attending to people who were overheated on the lawn. The only downside of this show was that due to how they were emptying the parking lot - it took us almost 2 hours to get out. We eventually just parked and turned the car off until we were able to get out. For Buffett - we parked in the same area but were out in less than 5 minutes, so I'm not sure what parking lot employees were doing differently. The drinks were delicious for both shows but the food left a bit to be desired. Overall, I always enjoy shows at Riverbend and will continue to visit for summer concerts. The key to enjoying Riverbend is to just roll with the punches and not have crazy high expectations. It's going to be hot, sweaty and too many people but I always end up enjoying myself.

It's been several years since I last visited, but yesterday made the trek with family members to see Miranda Lambert's show. This was my first on the lawn, having been in the pavillion previously times. It is covered in astroturf, which makes it better (no mud after rain). They do allow sealed water bottles, and beach chairs to be brought in. There were water bottle refill staions. They have a wide variety of beer, and other alcoholic bevs. There were several drink stands for lawn people as well, but you still have to go down the steps for food or restrooms.There were plenty of restrooms, as well as porta-potties.There were plenty of big screens to show visability too.I remembered how horrible exiting the parking areas are and we left early enough where it wasn't a problem. It was a great time.

The concert was great. But I'm here to review the food.It got me sick. Probably the worst food I've ever seen. 23 dollars for a hot dog, fries, popcorn and a water. The hot dog was 5 bucks, literally a burnt pencil in a soggy bun. The fries were literally inedible. Pretty sure that's what got me sick. They trick you cause the seasoning is good, but the fries are literal cardboard for 5 bucks. The water is 5 bucks and it's desani, no surprise. The popcorn for a bucket is 8 bucks, with refills so that was honestly the best deal. But again they make you think it's a good deal by giving you a free refill but once I ate damn near the whole bucket I wouldn't wanna go back for a refill. I would 100 percent recommend eating before. And if your stuck in a lynard skinnard concert for 4 hours and can't eat, well good luck Charlie.

Leaving venue is a nightmare. Took over an hour to get out of our parking space. Concert was amazing and venue was nice. We sat under the pavilion and we went to see Post Malone!