Complaint Review: Beer Bacon Music

This event was beyond a dissapointment, and frankly an outright scam by greedy organizers. The 2014 Beer Bacon Music Festival was advertised as a 2 day event, May 17-18th at the Frederick Fairgrounds from 12-5pm each day.

Promised with admission, pre the website and facebook were:

• BEER: 100+ beer varieties, representatives from over 30 breweries
• BACON: 2-ton all-you-can-eat bacon bar
• The Brewer’s $6K Homebrew Competition & Awards, with live judging to find out right in front of you WHO will win and WHY
• Chance to meet staff from EVERY brewery who’s beer will be served. This is a great chance to learn and talk about beer!
• Live demonstrations of the latest and greatest homebrew equipment
• 10+ Food Trucks serving delicious cuisine and trendy treats
• Á la carte gourmet and specialty bacon dishes
• Á la carte wine
• Outdoor patio featuring cigar and beer pairings from Guy and Lady Barrel and Goose Island

Pre-sale tickets were $45 for general admission, and folks were encouraged to purchase early to prevent sellouts. I ordered my ticket April 26 through ClickIt Ticket and printed it to bring with me to the festival.

They announced on Facebook Friday night that all 10,000 tickets had sold out, so I was glad I had planned ahead. We arrived at the festival around 12:30 and paid $5 to park.

What were we greeted with? A rowdy, disorganized crowd and lines stretching outside the fairground for folks with prepaid tickets, just to ENTER the festival. There was one one person checking those who had prepaid in. In spite of this, there was a second line dedicted to CASH entries, for a $65 cash fee. I watched folks paying cash walk right in with zero wait, in spite of the event supposedly being sold out. This was the first red flag.

After waiting in line for 30 minutes, security came to the gate and announced they were no longer letting anyone in. The festival had been oversold (that tends to happen when you claim to be sold out and accept cash entries at the door anyways) and the grounds were overcrowded, in spite of hundreds of folks with prepaid tickets waiting for entry. They tentatively promised to allow more people in after some had left. That took another 20 minutes, at which point they only allowed 20 people in at a time. They continued to accept more cash entries from folks without tickets. It took us nearly 90 minutes to even enter the festival.

Once we got inside, there were more unpleasant surprises.

Some highlights of the horrors awaiting us inside:

• The "2 ton bacon all you can eat bacon bar" was completely empty, totally out of bacon. Unsurprisingly, overselling an event tends to mean you don't have enough food to go around. I never managed to sample even a single slice.
• Lines for beer samples were unorganized and 15-20 minutes long. There were half of the promised "30+ breweries" in attendance. "Staff" were local folks paid $12/hour to pour, and couldnt tell you a thing about what they were pouring. So much for learning about what you're drinking.
• Half the food trucks promised. Lines here were also long, rowdy, and disorganized.
• The supposed cigar patio didn't exist. Instead, folks wandered the festival smoking, with little regard for others.
• Zero homebrew demonstrations. I looked all over. The extent of non-food vendors I could find were a single organic hop farm, and Yelp.

As you can expect, I was rather disheartened. However, things only got worse once folks complained. Complaints were left ignored, negative reviews were deleted from their Facebook page and users banned. Dozens of 5 star shill reviews from family members of the event organizers, as well as paid reviews from users based in India popped up in their place: pbs.twimg.com/media/BoEU-maIcAAW8gA.png

The only comments from organizers on the mess was a single comment insulting a user and accusing them of "not understanding basic math" when they remarked on the lowered attendance on Sunday's festival: i.imgur.com/pofcODt.png

You can see an article on the debacle here: fredericknewspost.com/news/economy_and_business/backlash-escalates-against-beer-bacon-music-festival/article_eecbc5c5-f1dd-5c55-b0a0-3b05d3e6d775.html#