Tonight was the “Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience” at the Xcel Energy Center, but the day started by visiting the Science Museum of Minnesota and seeing the Omni Theater’s newest show ‘A Beautiful Planet’ which was wonderful and then looked at the fun Mythic Creatures exhibit.
Here is the official blurb:
“Enter the world of Westeros with the Game of Thrones® Live Concert Experience – an immersive music and visual experience that will bring the Seven Kingdoms to life on a scale never seen before. Using state-of-the-art technology, Game of Thrones® composer Ramin Djawadi, along with a full orchestra and choir, will take fans on a musical journey through the realm – from King’s Landing to Winterfell, along the northern stretches of the Kingsroad to The Wall and across the Narrow Sea to Braavos, Meereen and beyond. Fans of the groundbreaking, critically-acclaimed and Emmy® Award-winning show will finally have an opportunity to immerse themselves in the Game of Thrones® universe through the breathtaking score created by Ramin Djawadi” (http://www.xcelenergycenter.com/events/detail/game-of-thrones)
Sloane, also a Game of Thrones fan, went with me and we had a good time and the music was wonderful, but they kicked us and everyone else in our section out of our seats (we had row 1 and they gave us row 18 in another section) and there were really bad sight lines. They had originally changed the date of the concert after selling tickets, from Friday Feb 17 to Monday Feb 20. They did not tell us ahead of time about the seats, just made us go to another line once we were inside and just handed us new tickets. No reason or explanation as to why. So seats I handpicked months ago, were no longer ours. There were empty rows around us, so we wondered if this was the reason for kicking us out of our seats/section – there were just too many unsold tickets (the PR for the show was bad and no one I know saw a television ad). The new seats we got were ok, but if we were a few more rows to the left we would not have been able to see anything. There were two big screens and lots of little ones, but all the action (clips from the show) took place on the two big screens and unless you were directly in front of these two big screens your seat was not very good. This was just weird, as why did they go through all the trouble of staging this big event and not allow all seats to see the big screens. Also it looked like if you had the VIP seats on the floor you could not see the big screens either, but that’s just a guess. So despite the stage being a ‘theater in the round’ they had all the individual performers at the other end, so you could not see them, except on the little screens and they really did not move around the stage. The show went on for an hour, then there was a 15 minute intermission, and then another hour. There were also spots on the big screen that were not working, a rope ladder and wires slightly to the left of us that were sometimes in the way. We also wondered if somethings were not working, as we both expected more lights and special effects. The music and show clips did not really follow any chronology, they just sort of lumped events and people together and we expected to see more of certain people and did not really see them. They ended the concert with a bunch of clips from the end of Season 6 and there were no hints for Season 7. The music and clips from the ‘Battle of the Bastards’ episode was probably the best part of the concert, but it was an amazing scene from Season 6. There was a cute little encore with a ‘In Memoriam’ Westeros style while a few musicians played ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair.’ There was also a tiny exhibit of 5 or 6 costumes and a Iron Throne, so that was disappointing as I expected them to have more and in one of the Ticketmaster blurbs it mentioned a merchandise area and there was just a table with t-shirts, so nothing special there either. Sloane mentioned that she thought the sound was too loud a few times and I would agree with her, but I also thought that sometimes the music sounded too good. Overall I had a good time and the music was wonderful, plus the shows cinematography which really comes though on the big screen, but there were too many other distractions going on for it to rank in my top concert category.
