It would be great if the advanced filter bar completely replaced the standard bar once installed. This was we can maintain the functionality of both, but only have a single filter/search bar on the screen. Right now it is a bit confusing to have two separate filters. I have noticed several complains on the forums and on the feature request page stating that viewers are becoming confused by the filter options and unable to find their desired events. Although many solutions have been proposed, I think merging the two bars would mitigate a majority of the concerns and reduce space consumption.

Alternatively, it may be ideal to move all standard filter option except Search to the advanced filter bar and leave the search bar separate. That was themers and developers can integrate it into their design a bit more.

I would recommend looking at TicketMaster as an example. You will see their advanced filter on the left with all possible filter options and their search box at the very top right. See below:

http://www.ticketmaster.com/section/sports?tmlink=tmhomeAb10004

I think this is your best option if you want to be a best-in-class solution.

Add a REGION field to venues, and a shortcode to filter venues by REGION. New York City is technically 1 City, but has 5 boroughs (counties), and many individual cities in those boroughs. A REGION field and shortcode filter would enable us to list venues by borough (e.g., Manhattan, Brooklyn, etc.) or by neighborhood (e.g., Greenwich Village, Hell's Kitchen, Upper East Side, etc.). The next step is to map venues by region.

Just switched from Events Manager (EM). EM maps multiple venues by region, category, and tag. EM displays map points for past events that match those criteria. So you can map venues that will have or have had Jazz events in Harlem. It's a powerful way to find venues.