Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

This is a cute little theater!
But first things first: parking is a bit difficult & the lots gets full really fast!
TIP: park around the Palace of Fine Arts Park. So after you watch, you can walk around & enjoy the view! :)
Anywho, I came to watch Potted Potter with one of my good friends. It was easy to determine which line was the will call line & which was the door purchase line. I appreciated that. We were scanned in & off to Hogwarts! The place was dimly lit & since it was still December, Christmas Trees were up & the place shone green lights!
Bathroom was quick to find & the line went super quick. It was clean & lots of paper to go around! Lots of stalls too which helped with the line flow.
I also had red wine & the wine was more on the tart side. We weren’t allowed to bring drinks inside so I had to chug it down.
Our seats were extremely comfy & were also rockers! There was no «bad seat» in the house because you can see the stage from every angle I believe. There was only one floor as well. The seats didn’t go so high so we weren’t far from the stage.
The place is really beautiful & I would come back to see another play!

Pros: comfortable seats with leg room! Cons: sound system was a problem during show. There is no center aisle so if you are seated in the center you must beg your pardon to the 25 people you have to schooch past. Bathroom had long line.

Yes, this theater could use a little restoration/​capital improvements funding.
It’s historic, which is why there’s annoyingly no middle aisle (that’s illegal now, but grandfathered into this place), and I’m guessing they put the front entrance where they did before the bridge approach was redone (which is why it’s so hard to find now). At least the rows are spaced sufficiently to get around seated folks and Google has figured out how to find the theater, so these issues are mostly trivial.
But this theater seats about 1000, and there aren’t too many theaters in San Francisco that can say the same (YBCA’s around 750, Masonic’s 3k). And there’s not a bad seat in this house. Backstage is a little barebones/​hacked-​together (certainly not the nicest dressing rooms in the city) and their bathroom situation could be improved (like anywhere, really), but this space is well-​loved by its devotees– performers and audience alike.
Also– unlike the Masonic, YBCA, Golden Gate, Orpheum or Geary theaters, the lobby has plenty of open space to rest comfortably before the house opens– which is good, because they’re also one of the holdouts who won’t let you bring drinks in.
Decent concert space, but hard for musicians you’d want to dance to because of all the seats. Better for theater/​dance performances or more stationary musicians instead.

The Palace of Fine Arts Theater is probably the worst venue I’ve ever been to, and I might be including the dive bars. Here are all the things that went wrong at the Palace:
*No obvious signs directing us to the theater. This led to a wrong turn and a detour around the entire building before we found the entrance.
*Will Call line moved slowly. The woman had trouble finding people’s tickets. When she got to us, it’s because she mis-​remembered the name we’d given and spelled out for her. Meanwhile, someone else finally joined her and distributed two sets of tickets while we were getting ours. This problem is fixable.
*The ticket-​takers were also mysteriously slow. In our line, it looked like the scanner didn’t properly register the tickets. So the woman closed down our line and everyone had to merge with the other one. We simply walked through the door during the ensuing confusion. This problem also is fixable.
There are several reasons why you wouldn’t want to sit in a theater that lacks a middle aisle. I don’t think these problems are fixable.
*To reach the middle, you get to walk over 25 other patrons. We could have seated ourselves first if we’d been able to 1) find the theater entrance and 2) get our tickets and enter the theater, all within a reasonable amount of time. Instead, we got to walk over all 25 patrons (maybe there were a few empty seats). For my elderly parents who enjoy the theater, this seating arrangement is not relevant to their interests.
*At intermission, the ones in the middle are the last to make it to the restroom line. Which makes you more likely to be the last person to return to your seat, after all 25 other patrons have returned as well.
*(Speaking of which, the restroom accommodations are insufficient. But this might be a problem for theaters generally, so let’s move on.)
*My date didn’t make it through the restroom line until after the second half of the performance had begun. It’s good that he (and everyone else) could return to his seat (albeit in the dark) during the performance, but obviously it was a disruption for everyone else. I was worried that I wouldn’t get to enjoy the performance with him. It turns out that dancing with the one who brought me accounts for a large portion of my enjoyment.
*If the theater happens to be overheated (which two out of the four Tenors who were performing that night mentioned while on stage, one while he was removing his tie to unbutton his shirt), then you’ll love having all those extra bodies in the non-​existent middle aisle.
I’m going to guess that they filled the middle aisle with seats for extra revenue. I predict that they will not use this revenue to install signs directing theater-​goers to the entrance.
I cannot recommend that anyone attend a performance here, even if it’s only to say that they’ve been to the Palace of Fine Arts. I’m sure the staff are all lovely people. But someone designed this place to be unfriendly to patrons. You can’t really undo that after the fact.

I will never go back here. Went to see the tenors and was really looking forward to it. It was awful. So incredibly hot in there that even one of the performers mentioned it. The sound system was awful. Not sure if that’s the theater or the production but we left at intermission. What a disappointment! It had a horrid smell too. Yuck.

Fantastic variety of shows and events, excellent, top notch, and attractive staff… a great old building that I hope gets more love and money in the coming years, it’s such an amazing venue! :)