Fever’s Instagram ads are hard to miss right now. Sweeping aerial footage, swirling lights set to strings, the kind of visual that makes you reach for your wallet before you’ve even finished watching. The DroneArt Show is returning to Leopardstown Racecourse on 1 and 2 May, and tickets are already selling fast, or at least that’s what the page tells you.
Before you commit, it’s worth knowing what you’re actually buying.
What is the DroneArt show?
The DroneArt Show is an outdoor classical music and drone light display held at Leopardstown Racecourse. A live string quartet performs works including Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake while a fleet of drones, around 1,000 according to the organisers, perform a synchronised aerial display overhead. The whole thing lasts about 65 minutes. Doors open two hours before showtime, food and drink are available on site, and the event is billed as family friendly.
The show is a real touring production. It has played in more than 40 cities around the world, and this Dublin run is technically a return visit rather than a debut. That “back by popular demand” framing does a lot of heavy lifting. Popular with whom, exactly, is a fair question.
The show has accessible friendly seating, but worth noting this is being charged at a higher rate.
Who’s behind the DroneArt show?
The show is presented by Fever in partnership with Nova Sky Stories, described as a global pioneer in drone technology. Nova Sky Stories has a connection to Kimbal Musk, which adds a layer of Silicon Valley gloss to proceedings and, depending on your appetite for billionaire-adjacent ventures, either reassures you about the technical ambition or makes you slightly more suspicious of the marketing.
Fever itself is a global events platform with a particular talent for making things look unmissable. If you’ve been to a Fever event before, you’ll already have a sense of the gap that can exist between the Instagram version of a night and the night itself. Their Candlelight concert series is a useful comparison point: intimate, candlelit classical performances that genuinely deliver on their promise most of the time. The drone show is a different beast, and the stakes are higher.
I’ve been to Fever events before. There’s a definite gap between the high fidelity Instagram ads and the event itself. They can be enjoyable, but expectations are rarely managed.
The pricing situation
Ticket prices for the May dates break down like this: Grandstand Standing at €20.90, Grandstand Seating at €40.90, Premium Seating at €56.90, and Accessible Seating at €36.90. Ground Level Seating at €26.90 is already sold out.
That accessible seating pricing really doesn’t sit well with me. Wheelchair users and attendees with mobility needs are paying €36.90, which is €16 more than the cheapest standing option and sits comfortably above the mid-range. Whatever the logistical reasoning, charging more for accessibility is poor form. It functions, in effect, as a disability tax, and it shouldn’t be something you simply scroll past in the pricing table.
At the top end, getting on for €57 for 65 minutes of outdoor classical music and a drone display is a significant ask, particularly when Dublin has no shortage of cultural nights out at comparable or lower prices.
The quality gap
Here’s where things get complicated. Reviews from previous showings, including the Dublin run last year, are genuinely mixed in a way that suggests the experience varies considerably depending on expectations going in.
Some attendees describe a magical evening, something genuinely unlike other nights out. Others tell a very different story, with not enough drones in the sky at once, long stretches where nothing is happening overhead, and a show that feels more like a conventional classical concert with occasional drone effects rather than the full-scale aerial spectacle the ads suggest.
A recurring theme in critical reviews is that the drones spend a surprising amount of time on the ground, presumably charging, rather than performing.
For many the drone show is overselling, overpromising and underdelivering.
The weather problem
This is an outdoor show in Ireland in May. That single sentence should be doing enough work on its own, but it’s worth spelling out. Wind is a genuine operational constraint for drone shows. Previous dates have seen drones appear for only a few minutes before conditions grounded them, with large portions of audiences leaving feeling short-changed.
The organisers are upfront that the event can be cancelled due to weather, with notification sent by email. What that means in practice is that you could travel out to Leopardstown, which is not a short trip for anyone relying on public transport, and find the drone element has been stripped back significantly or abandoned entirely. You’d be left with a string quartet in a racecourse, which isn’t nothing, but it isn’t what you paid for.
I’m not saying you’re on route to the Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Scotland. This is a much more professional operation that has genuine risks that organisers cannot be held accountable for. But it’s important to manage expectations, and I don’t feel the organisers do that. Which makes terms and conditions important.
Refunds and the fine print
Fever’s approach to refunds has been a point of contention across various events. The pattern that emerges from previous DroneArt Show disruptions is this that initial responses tend to offer vouchers or credit rather than cash refunds. Attendees who pushed back were eventually offered full refunds to their original payment method, but it required persistence. Know that going in.
It’s also not uncommon for people to resort to chargebacks through their banks.
What a great drone show looks like
It’s worth noting that drone shows, done well, genuinely are extraordinary. The Titanic Belfast drone show is a useful benchmark: a large-scale display that used the location and subject matter to create something that felt emotionally coherent and visually breathtaking. The technology is capable of genuine spectacle when it’s deployed with ambition and precision.
The DroneArt Show is not without merit. On a clear night, with conditions cooperating, it can clearly deliver moments that stick with you. The problem is the gap between the probability of that night and the certainty the advertising implies.
Before you book
If you’re set on going, a few practical things to remember.
Book parking in advance if you’re driving, check the weather forecast obsessively in the days before, and make sure you understand what the cancellation and refund process looks like before you hand over your card details.
If you’re on the fence, weigh it honestly. The ads are selling a dream. The reviews suggest a show that, on its best nights, gets close to it, and on its worst nights, doesn’t come close at all. For €40 and a trek to Leopardstown in Irish spring weather, that’s a gamble worth being clear-eyed about before you take it.
