Review: Arcsoc’s “Paradise Garage” Night of Disco

Disco theme turned Lola’s into an underwhelming underground garage.  

Arriving at about 11 with queue jump tickets, we were still left standing outside in the cold for quite a while, observing glitter-painted faces huddled above coats. When we eventually entered, IDs and tickets were checked and we climbed the stairs to see whether it was possible to turn Lola’s into a disco.

It turns out it is not.

Gold streamers alone don’t make a disco….

While the rooms were covered in gold streamers and there certainly were an abundance of disco balls, it still very much looked like a Cambridge nightclub rather than the promised “sweltering underground disco”. Perhaps as a result of the controversy attracted by the decorations at the last Arcsoc event, the organisers erred on the side of caution.

Drinks were relatively cheap, with £2.50 single vodkas and £2 Fosters or VK bottles, in addition to the normal loyalty card offers (£1.50 jaegerbombs to name one). It was clear that many revellers had taken advantage of the relatively cheap alcohol given that by 12 am most people seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Lots of people, lots of talking

The best thing about the event was the mood. The hype surrounding Arcsoc meant that we all ran into friends that we hadn’t seen in ages. Most people, even on the dance floor, were standing around and talking and the mood was really friendly and excited (perhaps because it’s only Week 1 and people are less tired).

The smoking area was the most crowded floor in the place

The flipside of the amount of people talking was that there weren’t many people dancing. The music was too soft and the most crowded floor in the place was the smoking area. The dual-level dancefloor at Lola’s hardly helped, as FOMO over whether there was better music on the other floor led us running up and down the stairs most of the time. It also split what wasn’t the largest crowd in the world into two halves, meaning neither dance floor ever attained peak Wednesday Cindies crowdedness.

Should’ve been less talking, more dancing

Finally, the ticketing method was a complete failure. Arcsoc offered cut-price advance tickets purchased via Tilt. We paid £6 and were told that we’d get £5 refunded to our bank accounts and have the ticket emailed to us. We didn’t get a ticket emailed and one friend didn’t even get a confirmation.

In the end, it was fine. All our names made it on the list at the door and we were able to get in with no issues. But it would have been much better to have known that we had successfully bought tickets. We’re all still waiting for the £5 refund and have not been told when to expect it.

All in all, a reasonably good night, but one that didn’t quite live up to the Arcsoc hype.