The arenas: Co-op Live, the AO Arena and the stadium shows

Manchester now has two of the biggest indoor venues in the country within three miles of each other, and they could not be more different to reach. Co-op Live sits on the Etihad campus in east Manchester, beside the stadium, and on a show night the whole area fills from late afternoon: Ashton New Road and Alan Turing Way are the approaches, and they are the roads everyone leaves on too. The AO Arena is built above Manchester Victoria station, hemmed in by Trinity Way and Hunts Bank, with the city centre pressing in on every side. Both venues have designated set-down areas for coaches and limousines; the chauffeur agrees the exact point with you in advance so that the group knows where to walk back to when the lights come up.

The stadium shows are their own category. When a tour plays the Etihad or Emirates Old Trafford, fifty or sixty thousand people arrive in the same two hours, and a limousine earns its keep by getting you close early and taking you away cleanly afterwards. The same applies to the summer concerts in Heaton Park, where the drop and the collection both happen on the park's perimeter roads. For Parklife weekend we have run everything from pink Hummers for groups of friends to the wrapped H2s we provided for SHEIN's branded festival transport.

None of this is new to Manchester. This is the city of the Haçienda, of Joy Division and The Smiths, of the Stone Roses at Spike Island and Oasis at Maine Road, and the appetite for a big night out built around a band has never gone away. What has changed is the scale of the venues and the traffic that comes with them, which is exactly why a chauffeur who knows the east Manchester one-way systems and the Victoria station back streets is worth having.

The theatres: Oxford Street, Quay Street, St Ann's Square and the Quays

Theatre nights ask something different of a limousine: less noise, more timing. Manchester's main houses are close enough together that one chauffeur covers all of them, but each has its own front door. The Palace Theatre is on Oxford Street, where the touring West End musicals play and where a stretch limousine pulling up on a Saturday evening draws a small crowd of its own. The Opera House is a few minutes away on Quay Street, on the Spinningfields side of Deansgate, which makes a pre-show dinner on Bridge Street or in Spinningfields the obvious plan. The Royal Exchange, in the round inside the old cotton exchange on St Ann's Square, is a set-down on Cross Street or Exchange Street and a short walk through the square.

Across the water, The Lowry at Salford Quays has its own forecourt and a view of MediaCityUK that is worth arriving in daylight for; it is also the home of Manchester's biggest Christmas shows. Bridgewater Hall on Lower Mosley Street is the concert hall – the Hallé, visiting orchestras, the occasional comedian – and is a short walk from the Midland Hotel for dinner afterwards. HOME on First Street covers the independent theatre and cinema, with a dozen restaurants on the doorstep. Whichever you are going to, the chauffeur drops at the door or as near as the street allows, and the return pick-up is agreed to the minute so nobody is standing on Oxford Street in the rain at eleven o'clock.

Dinner, then the show: how a Manchester concert night runs

The most common booking for a show night is not a limousine for six hours. It is a return booking: the limousine delivers you, is released while you are inside, and comes back at a time you set. It is priced as two runs rather than as the hours in between, which is why it is almost always the better-value way to have the same vehicle waiting at the end. A typical Saturday at the AO Arena looks like this.

• 5.30pm – Collection in PrestwichStretch Hummer arrives, second pick-up in Whitefield ten minutes later. Drinks opened, playlist on.
• 6.15pm – Dinner drop on DeansgateSet-down on Quay Street for an early table in Spinningfields. The chauffeur holds the coats.
• 7.30pm – The ArenaFive minutes from the restaurant to the agreed set-down point by Victoria. The limousine is released.
• 10.45pm – Encore, then outCollection at the same point. The chauffeur has watched the running time and is already waiting; the group is on the M60 while the car parks are still emptying.

Swap Victoria for the Etihad campus and the timings stretch by ten or fifteen minutes each way; swap the arena for the Palace Theatre and the whole evening compresses into the city centre. For a show that matters – a farewell tour, a birthday treat, an anniversary at the opera – many groups keep the limousine for the full evening instead, with a cruise past the city lights built in between dinner and the doors.

Which limousine for a concert or theatre night?

Headcount decides it. A classic or executive stretch limousine seats eight and suits couples sharing a night out, a family trip to a Christmas show, or a hen party heading to a musical at the Palace. For a Hummer night – sixteen friends at Co-op Live for a band they grew up with – the H2 is the vehicle Manchester asks for, and the black one is the arena favourite. Groups between nine and thirteen are better in a Lincoln Navigator or Ford Excursion stretch than squeezed into either. Beyond sixteen, a party bus keeps everyone together with room to stand. If the night is pink from the start, the pink Lincoln and pink Hummer are on the pink limo hire Manchester page.

Christmas shows, pantomimes and the December run

December is the busiest month of the year for theatre limousines in Manchester, and it is also when the roads are at their worst. The pantomime at the Opera House, the big family show at The Lowry, the Hallé's Christmas concerts at Bridgewater Hall and the touring musicals at the Palace all run at the same time as the Christmas markets and the office-party season. A limousine with a chauffeur who has done the Deansgate-to-Quays run in December traffic is the difference between arriving relaxed and arriving at the interval. Three generations in one white stretch for a Saturday matinee, collected afterwards for dinner, is one of our favourite bookings of the year. Every Friday and Saturday in December is a key date in Manchester, so book early – the Manchester limo hire calendar shows how quickly the month fills.

What a concert or theatre limo costs in Manchester

Limo hire in Manchester starts from £365 for a one-hour stretch limousine, which covers a simple arrival: collected at home, set down at the venue, limousine released. From that starting point the price is quoted for your evening, because it depends on the vehicle you choose, whether you want the arrival only, a return collection or the limousine for the whole night, the date – a Saturday in December is not a Tuesday in March – and where we collect you. A return booking for a sixteen-seat Hummer and a one-hour theatre drop for a couple are very different hires, and we price each one for what it is. How the four factors move a quote is set out on limo hire Manchester prices; tell us the show, the date and the headcount and we will send a fixed figure.