I went to the circus this past Sunday for the first time in 20 years. But before I give you my review of this greatest show on earth I have to start with the parking lot. I go to the RBC Center so infrequently I forget how expensive it is to park there. $10 dollars to park my own car on dirt is ridiculous. I was recently at a ‘Canes game thinking the same thing, but that’s a professional sport, and pro sports are big money. Well, apparently the circus is big money too.
My date had not been to the circus since she was a kid, and I didn’t want to be a Nancy Naysayer, so I tried not to bitch too much about the money (especially since she was paying, and she was hot). But it seemed as though the city went out of its way to make getting in and out of the RBC Center as complicated as possible. I sat in that mess that day thinking, “Damn, I should have just caught the bus.”
Fast-forward to this past Sunday. I thought, surely traffic won’t be as bad for the circus on a Sunday afternoon, and it wasn’t. Not at all. Then again most of the people watching the circus were under the age of 13, and they were not paying to park. When the attendant in the lot politely asked for his $10 I thought to myself (meaning I said it out loud), “Does the bus even run to the RBC Center?”
No it does not! I called Capital Area Transit and asked about RBC and Alltel, and CAT doesn’t have regular service to either one. I love my mayor, but how can he allow this? It’s urban sacrilege. Mass transit should be the first choice always. Suppose folks needed to leave RBC in a hurry because of a chemical spill or a fire. Whatever plan they have surely does not include buses and bus lanes. And I couldn’t help but think about all of those families, mostly black and brown, who dropped ten bills before seeing the first elephant. I’m single and $10 is nothing to sneeze at.
Now the circus is what the circus is. Seeing seven motorcycles spin around a metal cage, and tigers hop backwards with their paws upright, and elephants do synchronized dance moves is worth every bit of the $15 price tag. And that was the super nose bleed section. I went up two escalators to get to my seat. Even though the skits were a little campy and drawn out the kids loved them, and the parents seemed to enjoy the experience as well.
It’s not the circus I remember, however. There were a lot of C.G. effects and bright lights and a state of the art sound-system. Then again technology does not make a tiger less dangerous or an elephant more intelligent. The show was two and a half hours long and well worth the money, but the extras are where they get you. A paper hat cost $12; a program was $12; a kid’s t-shirt was $25; a stuffed animal was $16; a spinning baton-like thing with glowing lights (I know it sounds cool, but the quality was really cheap) cost $22. I don’t know how much the popcorn was, but I’m sure it was more than a Happy Meal. For a family of four it would cost $70 just to walk in and sit down and buy nothing. You can double that easily if you buy souvenirs. That’s an electric bill for that same family. I think that’s too much in these tough times, but those folks lined up to pay all of it.
The circus is not like Christmas—you can’t have the kids make their own imaginary trapeze stunts. There’s nothing like the circus and what it does to a child. It just doesn’t seem right that it should cost the parents so much. I would be willing to pay an extra five bucks on my ticket if families got a discount. But I realize that not too many adult couples go the circus, and that’s not economically viable.
One thing the City of Raleigh can do is save these families $10 by allowing them to take mass transit to a venue that should have been downtown in the first place.
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