Official June 19, 2013 – PGE Arena, Gdansk, POLAND, thread
 

So, after 30 long years of waiting BJ is finally coming for their first ever full show in Poland. Yes, first ever. You can find some info on the net that they played here in 1993 but that is not true. The show was scheduled at some point but never happened. So there are no stats or anything as there is no show history in Poland.

The only time they were here was in 2000 to collect gold record for ‘Crush’, and gave about 25min TV promo performance, full playback!!! A total disgrace for BJ!!! I have seen them do this only a couple of times in their career. And there was a really short interview at the end of it. You can have a look at this here:

They said during that short event they will come in June (2001) for the full concert, but they never did. In fact very few people knew about this performance before too. It was broadcasted on Polish TV few weeks after it happened. They were in Poland for few hours and that was it actually. The good news is they are coming in June indeed, only 12 years later. Better late than never :)

Promoter says over 30 thousand tickets have been sold for this show, which is a very good achievement, given the number of other big shows this year in Poland and the fact it is not in capital and in the middle of the week. I am actually positively surprised about this.

So let’s wait and see what they’ve got in store for us after such long delay ;) I will update the set list after the show here on the first page.

Here's the final setlist:

1. That's What the Water Made Me
2. You Give Love a Bad Name
3. Raise Your Hands
4. Born to Be My Baby
5. Lost Highway
6. Runaway
7. It's My Life
8. Because We Can
9. What About Now
10. We Got It Going On
11. Keep the Faith
12. (You Want to) Make a Memory
13. In These Arms
14. Captain Crash & the Beauty Queen from Mars
15. We Weren't Born to Follow
16. Who Says You Can't Go Home
17. Rockin' All Over the World
18. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead / Start Me Up
19. Bad Medicine

Encore:
20. Someday I'll Be Saturday Night
21. Wanted Dead or Alive
22. Have a Nice Day
23. Superman Tonight
24. Never Say Goodbye (first verse and chorus)
25. Livin' on a Prayer

26. Always

Original message from 5.11.2012:

I hope you guys will forgive me for opening this thread this early, but it has been my dream ever since I joined here. To have a possibility to see them in Poland was a dream, but to see them in my hometown, was even beyond any dream could ever go. Warsaw, the capital, might be the first city in everybody’s mind for that, but for me personally my city is the best city they could ever visit in Poland. And as a native citizen of Gdansk, with pride and honour, I would love to host this thread, if you don’t mind :)

Gdansk is a city of over 1000 years old, and had a really rich history, but for all of us, it newest history is the most important. It is here, in Gdansk, where “Solidarity” movement was set up, where strikes started in the 80’, which eventually led to the collapse of socialism in Poland, and later in whole Europe. The fall of Berlin Wall was only the aftermath of the actions taken in my hometown. We are proud to call our city the City of Freedom. You might know Lech Walesa, our former president, and he was the leader of “Solidarity” movement in the shipyard of Gdansk that has changed not only ours’, but world’s history forever!

And Bon Jovi, like no other band suits this scenario. We weren’t born to follow too, we stopped the communism regime, we always fight for our rights here, and win. FAITH, COURAGE, LOVE! That’s what this city is all about. Always has been. And that’s exactly what Jon is telling us in his songs, especially on The Circle and I believe in the new upcoming album too. Message of BJ songs is here all over the town. And over here, their songs will feel like at home.

As I have mentioned several times, I run a travel company here, so I know just basically everything about this city, sights, hotels, transport, more than any other casual citizen. I would like to invite you to come here and share this joy with us. I’d be more than happy to help any of you with any questions, for free of course. I don’t want to use my company over here. BJ is my passion and I will not earn a cent on you with that. It would be simply against my beliefs. I will do my best to make your stay the best possible if you decide to come here. In the course of the next couple of months, please feel free to contact me about it, I am all for your disposal . This will be a true honour for me!

So, for the start I would like to show you the venue. This is one of the stadiums that hosted football players at the last EURO 2012. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful stadiums in the world. It’s design is based on our local jewel – amber – but I will tell you about it more later for sure :)

Here it is, PGE Arena, which is actually a stadium for about 40 thousand people. Please watch the gallery, I am sure you will love it too:
http://pgearena.gdansk.pl/en/arena
http://pgearena.gdansk.pl/en/gallery

So much for now, back to work and that damn conference :) I will get back later today with more details :)

KEEP THE FAITH!!!

No to Kuba trzeba przyszykować jakąś akcje i porządnie rozpromować ten koncert ;D

This is one of the best thing in my life!! I have seen them 3 times but it will be 1st time in my country!! !!!!!

I'm happy for you but you should try to rewrite the bible. You are obviously a very talkalative and very communicating guy!

Lucky you ! I am happy for you. Do you know how much are the tickets?
I still don´t know which city to pick :)

I've been in Gdansk once. It was few months ago. When Greece faced Germany during the Euro Cup Quarter Finals. PGE Arena is an amazing stadium that's a matter of fact, same goes for Gdansk, it's very beautiful. Anyway, have fun! :)

A question to Polish people: Is www.eventim.pl the only (or the best) site to buy tickets? This Gdansk show announcement was very good news for me as Wissair flies between Gdansk and my home town Turku, with extremely low prices! :D

Going to get GC ticket for this tomorrow.

Yes it's good site to buy ticket.

You will probably also can buy tickets here (oficial site from agency which bring Bon Jovi to Poland):
http://bilety.imprezyprestige.com/

Hope to get tickets tomorrow.

You wrote in another topic that you went to Berlin to see Richie. Please tell me, did you go by car and how long did it take you back from Berlin to Gdańsk?

I already have a ticket for Berlin thus my question.

Aloha !

It's roughly a 6 hour drive. Both by train and by car. That's if you keep up with the speed limit, and everyone knows I never drive faster than the speed limit.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Yes, that's what the maps indicate, but you know how it is - in reality it could be different (I mean if there are by-passes etc).
Just wondering what time I could possibly arrive if I left after the show in Berlin.
Yeah, it would be a nice ride afer the show..

Btw, if they could announce all the dates at the same time, that would make all the planning so much easier. Would probably choose Gdańsk and Prague then, as it would be more convinient for me.

Come to Prague!

When I read this new dates on twitter and saw Poland on the list, I thought on Kuba


Good for you man !
And for all the fans out there who have been waiting so much years to see the band in their home town

Ok, I am back home and can go to your question now:

Thanks. Here are the prices:
http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...ons/965366.jpg

Diamond Circle for 1490zł is a package, it is said that there will also be an option for DC ticket only for 790zł soon. Normal GC for 350zł and the GC for 500zł is a Fast Track entrance (early entrance) with some gadgets to it.
By the way, 100zł is about 25Eur to help you with calculations.

Yes, www.eventim.pl and http://bilety.imprezyprestige.com , just like BonJovi100 says. Physical tickets will be also sold at local sales offices – that is Empik and Media Markt shops, but you have to be here to buy them, no internet sales for those two options.

Yes, we were in Berlin for Richie’s show. And we went there by car indeed. It’s about 6h drive in reality from Berlin to Gdansk. The part from Berlin to border will go really fast, but once you get to Polish roads it will not go that smoothly. And maybe you could add a little since the show is in the middle of the week so the traffic might be a little more intense on Polish side.

It’s great to hear so and I am glad you enjoyed the stay. That game was the only one in Gdansk I missed. Saw all the group games though :)

Thanks :) I am in heaven indeed :)


It’s great to see that some of you want to come for our show. I hope to meet you personally.

And one more thing, could any of the moderators add the name of the city in the title of the thread? I was so excited about the news and moreover in a rush during the day when I wrote the post and somehow forgot to write “Gdansk” in the title. Thanks in advance :)

The DC ticket only you mean sold by FanClub? Or will there be also other DC tickets available elsewhere?

So far DC is only available through Backstage unfortunately. Today I called the official Polish promoter of the show, and they told me that for now they can’t confirm whether DC tickets will be sold in public sales too or not. This decision is up to BJ management, not theirs. If that happens, they will inform about it on their website and all other sale sites (like eventim.pl).

Thank you for the information :)

Has somebody already bought tickets to this show via Eventim.pl? I got a "Ticket alarm" email earlier today and got access to the presale. And now I'm extremely happy to have GC tickets to Tampere and Gdansk! :p

I can happily and officially confirm that I will be in GC for Gdansk (Fast Track)! :) Whoohoo! I still can’t believe this is happening. And also got them in Eventim presale today.

I had to eventually pass with DC, as first of all I don’t need most of the things they offer in the package, which means I’d have to join Backstage just to get ticket only, which would be double the price of GC tix. But most importantly none of my friends can afford DC anyway now, so I’d have to be there without them and that will not be that fun I guess. It seems that a bigger party will be in GC anyway :) Maybe if they consider adding some DC tickets only in public sale, I might consider upgrading my ticket. But on the other side, there’s one thing that bugs me about DC – that I’d have to stare at the band’s asses and back when they are on the catwalk, which is something I do not find exciting at all :)

It’s amazing to hear that so many of you are coming for our show. I will arrange a meet up party for sure. You can count on that! :)

From what I know, there's no catwalk. I hope I'm wrong because it makes the whole GC pointless - it's only gaining money.

Where did you find such info? I actually liked the catwalk part very much, so that would not be a good news if there isn’t any this time.

So you guys are coming to us, and I am coming to you, as I will also be in Tampere and Stockholm too :) Fantastic! Looks I will make lots of new BJ friends next year :)

Can happily confirm that I bought my GC ticket through eventim as well and will indeed be there. Been to two Philly gigs, hoping to go to another Philly gig this year, but so far no dates announced for US.. so we'll see how it goes.

Screw the catwalk. It was never used anyway. If they come back with the same stage, that would be very lazy. I don't care what the stage looks like, it's the music that counts. The HAND Tour indoor stage was cool though, and I loved the OWN Tour stadium stage.

It's Really nice to see people from other countries come to us ;D Welcome, welcome...

Kuba we'll see in GC Fast Track and with all of fans we'll see in bar in Gdańsk on afterparty. We didn't decided oficcially yet.
We'll organize afterparty + oficcial meeting which probably take 2 days.

From the pictures here. I know it doesn't mean anything for 100% but still..
http://www.eventim.cz/bon-jovi-obraz...03&picId=22847

I know it almost wasn't used but at least two songs were done there, so being in the front of GC meant you were close to the band. Without it, the whole GC is pointless.

Thanks for the photo. I found the same picture on bj.com too. But when you look at for example this: http://backstagewithjon.bonjovi.com/vip and pick “Canada” as location you will see catwalk on the pictures. I know, those are arenas, but still it might be the same for stadiums too, just like on TC tour where it was used in both. Still it’s confusing, but I think even if we asked this question to BJ management now they would probably say “ we don’t know yet” or something like that.

I agree on both things in general. They didn’t use the catwalk as much as they could/should have. But when they did I think it was working great, even for those few songs. So it was not a bad idea, but rather not used properly. The thing is that catwalk helped with the interaction with the crowd, especially the ones who could not afford DC and wanted to see the band close even for a moment. And like Johny says, if there is no catwalk this time, GC is rather pointless and only for the extra money unfortunately.
And I don’t care about the stage at all too. Richie’s stage was absolutely as basic as possible and those shows where one of the finest I’ve seen. It’s always about music first.

I'm not sure if I agree with that. You're still guaranteed to be within a relatively close vicinity of the stage, whereas if you buy general admission you can be stuck in the back of the stadium, and even if you're not, forget about going to the bathroom or getting a beer or whatever once you've got your spot - unless you're prepared to lose it.

That's true but still the difference in price is horrendous. In Prague the GA is 1690CZK and GC 1890CZK, it's almost twice expensive. I can try to understand the higher price with the chance of the band performin on the circle. (still the prices are too high; Bruce's GA ticket was for 1100CZK btw)

I agree. But it's a simple law of supply and demand at work. If people stop buying, they'll lower the prices. By the looks of it, there's still enough people buying to warrant those prices. So all is good for them.

For those who are considering coming to Gdansk for BJ show, I would like to inform you that low cost airlines have just announced their summer timetables this week and now it’s a great time to buy flights for really good price.
Here are examples of the costs for return flights during the week of the show in Gdansk in June, but of course they can change any second (prices including cabin baggage only, which is for free):

from Turku - 45€ (Wizzair)
from Stockholm - 55€ (Wizzair)
from London - 75£ (Wizzair or Ryanair)
from Liverpool - 55£ (Wizzair)

Today I got flight tickets from Gdansk to Stockholm and from Turku to Gdansk (for BJ shows in May) and I paid only about 18€ for both, including all the fees!!! Not even 10€ for each, unbelievable. I have never bought flights this cheap. So I highly recommend you taking a look at this too.

For those living in other cities, here’s a list of all available flights to Gdansk from all over Europe, from the Gdansk Airport website. At the moment it misses out summer schedule, which will probably be added soon:
http://www.airport.gdansk.pl/schedule/arrivals-schedule

Aloha !

That's all for the better. There are plenty of stories nowadays from fans buying GA tickets and saying the atmosphere is way better there nowadays than in the GC, where people buy a ticket for that spot simply so they can walk around, get a beer and be ****ing annoying all the time. Those are the wankers that just don't get it, but the kind of people promoters are most interested in. 4 years ago the back of the GC was empty, nowadays it's annoying with plenty of people too busy getting a beer, texting, walking around and all of that shit. If you can't hold your pee for 2,5 hours you've got no business at the standing area of a concert.

I highly recommend you to take a look at what airport Wizzair flies to as well. These fairs don't mean anything really, WizzAir will only get interesting a few months in advance, the same with RyanAir and other cheap airlines. So ignore Kuba's suggestion, he's talking out of his ass. Buying tickets now is silly, flights with WizzAir will be cheaper roughly 2 months before the show.

WizzAir, RyanAir, Transavia etc all fly to b-airports, meaning you'll have to find additional transportation to get to the city. Skavsta (Stockholm) is 100km away from Stockholm and has no trainstation, which makes it a bitch to get to, really, unless you've got a car or are willing to spend an additional 15E for a 1,5 hour bus drive to Stockholm.

If you're flying to Gdansk from the big airports like Heathrow instead of Luton you'll easily spend more cash on the flight but will save time due to not needing to travel by train or bus to get to the city and will save money for it as well. RyanAir flies at Stansted but a round trip by train costs roughly 30GBP if I remember correctly, meaning an addition 35E on top of your flight. This might not sound like such a huge amount of money, but travelling from Stansted to London will cost you an additional hour at least.

Any more questions, feel free to ask. I'll most likely go to Gdansk as well to meet up with my Polish homies over there. :)

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

First of all, as far as I remember Gdansk is connected directly only with 5 big international airports, that use traditional airlines: Munich, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Oslo and Warsaw (which won’t help you much in this case). All the rest are those B-airports with low cost airlines (Dublin is another big airport but it is only connected with Ryanair here).

For everyone who used low-cost airlines before it is obvious they use B-airports, outside the city centers (usually about 50-100km one way). So I didn’t have to write that. But even though they are outside of city centres, they are actually well connected with those big cities, and the trip by bus or train takes usually about 1-1,5h one way. Trains are in fact the most expensive way to get to/from those airports, buses are way cheaper. And even with added costs of bus or even train, still it is much cheaper than using traditional airlines from big airports.

By taking London’s example, there is no way to get a direct flight from Heathrow to Gdansk, so it means stopovers on the way on some other big airport, which makes in fact the trip longer than with low-costs with added time for the bus/train trip. So it looks like this:
a) London Heathrow to Gdansk will last at least about 5h (including stopovers) and will cost in June min. 180-200£ (return flights)
b) London Stansted or Luton to Gdansk will last about 4h (including 1h15min bus ride from/to London city centre) and will cost in June about 80-90£ or less (return flights and also including the tickets for the bus to London’s city centre which may vary from 2-16£ for return tickets – http://www.easybus.co.uk/ , http://www.terravision.eu/ )
Moreover is Seb’s logic you can get from London city centre to Heathrow in seconds and even for free, which is not, so you have to add that cost anyway, which makes the difference even bigger.
Same goes for Stockholm to Gdansk, which will include stopovers too and will cost twice as much using traditional airlines too, and will not be faster anyway, compared to Stockholm Skavsta Airport + bus.

I admit, there is a chance you might get a cheaper ticket in some kind of promo in low cost airlines in few months from now, but it won’t be much cheaper, especially for the trip to Poland in June. Like again, with London’s example, lots of Polish students go to UK for the summer for work and those who live in London during the year go back for the summer to Poland for holidays. Airlines have been aware of that very well for years, and they have no interest of dropping the prices in those months, because they will sell those seats anyway. Simple as that.

Obviously Seb wanted to shine with his knowledge, but he didn’t do his homework well, not for the first time and not for the last. I don’t care about his overgrown ego, but I can’t let him misinform some of you about flights to Gdansk which might cost you a lot of money, that you could spend on something else, instead of traditional airlines. I used flights from/to Gdansk about 20 times or more, from/to various airports in Europe, including about 5 times to London (Luton or Standted), and experienced that myself how it works, so I think I can say a lot more than Seb about the cheapest flights to/from Gdansk. Decision is up to you.

We are coming from Berlin with Air Berlin directly to Gdansk and I pay less than 50 EUR one way. Only booked one way though since I get to get to Stuttgart afterwards.

In Prague are these prices ...

GA = 1690 CZK = 68 €
GC = 2890 CZK = 116 €
DC (with package) = 8990 CZK = 360 €

So THE year for me and all Polish BJ fans has come :) We are still months before the first ever show in Poland but I just would like to share with you some updates.
I will start with the promotion of the show in my city, which was going on for the whole month of December pretty well, including billboards, huge or smaller ones, all over the city centre. Last week I took a walk in the Main/Old Town and took some pictures of it. One might say that BJ is in the house already :) By sharing these pictures with you I would like to take you for a short winter walk in the town too. There is lots of sightseeing to do here. The places that you can see on the pictures are for example Main Train Station located just by the main road of the city, tenement houses of the Main Town, St. Mary’s Church (the biggest church in the world made of red brick), Philharmonic Hall or so called Long Wharf (Dlugie Pobrzeze) over the Motlawa River, with the city’s most characteristic symbol – The Crane.
I so can’t wait for June :)

http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...cjaGdansk1.jpg
http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...cjaGdansk2.jpg

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a beautiful billboard!!!

Very nice work by the promoters....

Finally BJ management gave up, and option for DC ticket only is now available on Polish Eventim (thanks dewey1961 for the info):
http://www.eventim.pl/bon-jovi-bilet...ix&kuid=466683

Now I am really tempted to upgrade my Golden Circle Fast Track. Really tempting, although still it has its pros and cons (apart from higher price only).
Although I think this decision came a little too late as most of the Polish die-hard fans have bought their tickets already, because even if they wanted to be in DC at first no one could afford the damn package for almost 1500PLN, which was more than 4 times more than the cost of regular GC. 790PLN for DC ticket only is much better option and at least it’s available now. Better late than never I guess.

Interesting data regarding ticket sales in the Polish media. They're saying people from many different countries are going - tickets were bought from places like Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Israel, Great Britain, Norwayu, Sweden, Ukraine, Holland. The biggest foreign group is Lithuanians - 300 tickets were sold there, then Belarussians, Ukrainians and Russians.

The most interesting thing is that they are claiming that they are "approaching the number of tickets that were sold for Jennifer Lopez" - which is 19k. God knows, though, what "approaching" means. I reckon it's somewhere at around 15k if it's true. Not terrible for the first couple of months, but surely hope it reaches about 25k for Gdańsk. They're saying they have 35k tickets for sale.