From the ashes of Cave nightclub of 10+ years ago, The Star has opened a new nightclub – Marquee Sydney, sister club of the original Marquee in Las Vegas. I have heard stories of many people being turned away from the door for various excuses – Bad shoes, bad attire, too many guys, not enough people, too many people and the unspoken one of too many ethnics. Tonight seemed like the best bet to try to get in. Dressed our best, so here we go!

Crowd Shot

Saturdays @ Marquee Nightclub Sydney (at The Star (City) Casino Complex) 
Assessment Time: 11:15AM – 4:00AM
Opening Hours: 9:00PM – 4:00AM
Lockout: Unknown, but there are no pass-outs / re-entry once you leave. 
Address: 80 Pyrmont St, Pyrmont. It’s within the Star (Casino) Entertainment Complex. Walk in through the main entrance on the Eastern side, and the entrance to Marquee is immediately to your right.
Venue Website:  http://www.star.com.au 
Event Website:  http://www.marqueesydney.com , http://www.fb.com/marqueesydney
Occurrence: Every Saturday (and Friday)
Outside Line: Arrived at 11:15PM with about 60 people in the general line. The line has people regularly going through, but just not fast enough. The guestlist line is a separate line altogether, and people are actually legitimately being expressed through to the club without wait, as it should be. It took just over 30 minutes lining up here, quite long. Keep in mind though that tonight is a resident DJ night. If you wanted to come where when a huge DJ/band/act was playing, expect to queue up for 2 hours plus.
Dress Code / Door Policy The door policy is probably the strictest or, if not, one of the strictest that I’ve been to ever. Dress Code: Guys – You really need to have at least dress leather shoes with collared shirts to have a chance of getting in. Avoid sneakers or simple shoes . Girls need to dress up pretty well. Smart casual you can probably get away with for both sexes on a normal night. Now that you have clothing sorted, the ratio is the next thing – you need pretty much an even ratio of guys to girls with your group. A group of 3 Caucasian guys and 1 girl were rejected (I couldn’t guess what the reason was) . We were let in with 5 Asian guys, 4 Asian girls and 1  attractive Caucasian girl. Door Policy: No bottles, sharps or whatever. They even checked my keychain, and I had to throw away my compact swiss army knife into the bin, which was understandable, but sad for me. After being patted down you get a photo taken and your ID scanned into their computer system in case you cause trouble. It felt like  walking into a well dressed prison. 
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $30 is the standard cover charge on a regular resident DJ night. If you are lucky/unlucky enough to hit a night where there is an International DJ or Popular local act playing, the entry fee will easily jump higher. E.g. The weekend Avicii played, entry was $60, Above and Beyond were $50.  In the future they will have a pre-purchasing system for tickets. 
Guestlist: See the website. I did send an enquiry but as of a month later didn’t get a reply. Try to send them a few emails to make sure they read it. Or just mention you have a few grand to spare.
Table / Bottle Service: Table (or Bottle) service is quite a new thing to Australia, but is common in the larger clubs overseas. There are some other places that have attempted to do it but here this is the true implementation of table service. Basically its a small table for you and some friends to drink at and signal to everyone else in the club that you have, or  have had, a lot of money. You get a big bottle of wine/champagne/vodka/whatever on your table ready to go. You also get very quick waitress service. It comes at the exorbitant prices from $3,000 $10,000, though I have heard more people say that it is $10,000 to get a table. Despite the prices, tonight all the tables were booked. Amazed.
Inside: After paying the cover, head up the escalators to enter the atrium / foyer where there is a cloak room and behind, a small open room to which there is a girl dancing with nothing but flowers and leaves on her. Ok, I’m impressed. On the left is a room (the “boom box”) which was unfortunately for a private party tonight, but on the right is the open main room of the club. Here the room is roughly divided into two areas – The bar at the rear and the main dancefloor down at the front. We enter through the rear to the main bar, which is a circular bar in the middle of this half of the room. Lounges line the walls here. It’s a medium sized bar and could probably hold 60 people around its circumference.

Stagger down to the next level (and the second half of the room) where there is a row of private tables with bottle service. Four tables on each the left and right hand side. It’s smaller than I expected. These tables are the only seats next to and on the same level as the dancefloor. The dancefloor itself is a medium sized floor approximately enough to fit 200 people or so in a packed situation. On the right there is a door to the outside smoking area, where there is a mini bar and some tables. On the left is a small passage that leads to an impressive bathroom. (more later). At the front is the DJ booth spanning the width of the floor. Podiums on the left and right. Above are concentric blinking led lights. The biggest thing you probably would notice though is the LED screen behind the DJ, spanning again the width of the room. It blurts out colours and shapes and what nots.