On Tuesday, August 1 I went with my wife, my parents, and my grandmother to see the 8 pm performance of Avaia. The first thing that you notice as you pull in is that you have to pay for parking. It doesn’t cost very much, but if you’ve spent $100 for your family to see the show, being asked to pay $6.50 for parking just doesn’t seem right.
My grandmother doesn’t use a wheelchair, but also can’t walk very far, so we needed handicap parking. The only handicap parking we could see was on the other side of the box office. We found it was closer to park in a regular parking spot that was available. There may have been closer handicap parking, but they weren’t marked well.
Our tickets were at the box office, and I was told to go at least 40 minutes early to pick them up. We got there at about 7:20 and it only took a few minutes for me to pickup the 5 tickets. Then we had over half an hour before the show started. We headed into the concessions tent and expected to be able to go and take our seats. Unfortunately the performance tent was roped off until 7:45 pm. I don’t know if this is common practice, or if there was a problem that night. In either case, they probably had a few more items sold since we were kind of forced to loiter around the concessions tent.
The tents kind of smelled like horses. After a couple of minutes I didn’t notice it all, but my mother said she smelled it the whole time. We went on one of the hottest days of the year, so I’m sure it was difficult to keep everything ventilated well. Overall the tents are very impressive. My father said he didn’t think he was in a tent at all.
Our seats were amazing. When we first got there the usher showed us where our seats were. We were in the front row (so-called Orchestra Seating). Actually, the front row was covered up, and we were in row 2 (the first available row). It ended up that he put us in the wrong seats. We were 2 rows back. They were still great seats; just not quite as good as we first thought they were.
The tent is laid out with 3 types of seating. There are bench seats close to the ring (Orchestra), and then there are “box seats” (Ringside). These are the only regular, padded seats in the tent. There is then a very large aisle that goes around the ring with more bench seats around the outside. The tent seats approximately 1,000 people.
I don’t know for sure how many people were there that night, but I think they were at 60-70% capacity. They had 2 large sections covered so no one could sit there, but most of the other seats were filled.
As I mentioned, it was one of the hottest days of the year. The concessions tent was cooler than outside, but still warm. But the tent itself was much better. It was comfortable enough. However it was a little foggy inside the tent. I assume this was because of the weather, but it could have been caused by something else.
Read more of our series on Avaia:
- Cirque Niagara Avaia - Background
- Cirque Niagara Avaia - Act 1
- Cirque Niagara Avaia - Intermission
- Cirque Niagara Avaia - Act 2
- Cirque Niagara Avaia - Observations
You can see some nice pictures of the tents/grounds, as well as a few pictures from inside in the Cirque Niagara Avaia section of the Niagara Falls Image Gallery.
You can also learn more about Cirque Niagara, Avaia, the creators, and the performers on the official Cirque Niagara web site.
The second act begins with a smaller trampoline. Five men took turns doing some amazing flips and twists. My legs tensed up with every jump, as if I’d be able to catch them if they fell.
The grand finale of Avaia was spectacular! It is an amazing display of a type of horseback riding called Cossack riding. Two horses and two riders would come out at a time. The horses would run around the circle quite quickly, and the riders would jump on and off them as well as ride backwards and upside down. After a few laps and tricks, those horses and riders would leave and another set would come in.
There was one man who from a running start on the ground jumped up to a standing position on a horse and stayed up. I didn’t know you could do that! Another man was riding a horse, slid down the side, and basically crawled underneath the horse around to the other side. It looked pretty dangerous with the legs/knees of the horse getting awfully close to his head and body, but he came up the other side unharmed. What a way to end the show!
One of the first parts of Avaia is a great performance by 5 acrobats. They stand on each other and balance in all sorts of crazy ways. For instance, at one point there were 2 men doing handstands. Another man stood on their heads, and yet another man balanced on the head of the man who was standing on the heads of the men doing the handstands. Phew and wow!
There was a group of 4 female contortionists who could bend in ways that just weren’t natural. One girl bent backwards in half. She then ended up crawling under her own legs! Ow!
The only slip-up of the entire evening was a woman who was juggling rings. Even then, it wasn’t a big deal. She started out by juggling 6 rings, and then 7. Everything was going fine until she tried the 8th ring. She dropped a couple and tried again. She had all of them going for a few seconds, but then finished up. I’m sure she was frustrated.
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