Hello all!
Over the past couple of years we've been to a number of different "family" events. Every one promises to be an amazing day out, with a long list of fantastic activities and a glitzy promotional video.
Then when you get there the AMAZING children's festival has 2 food vendors to feed over 1,000 people - and no you can't bring in your water bottle or snacks love. And the "circus skills arena" is a bloke twizzling a plate on a stick - he'll teach you if you buy a plate for a tenner...
The Christmas Covid-safe drive through experience is some deflated B&Q decorations and miles of queues to get in (that one even made the national news with its fyre festival vibes). Still waiting on my £60 refund there.
And today the fantastic cat "extravaganza" with amazing video from previous event is 4 vendors and a face painter (* for an additional charge obviously). But of course we should have known it wouldn't compare because that video was filmed at an event in a different location... but they're happy to use it as an advert on the "buy tickets" page.
And so we spend a day "trying to make the best of it", writing an email expressing our disappointment, getting back an excuse like "it's the first time we've tried to run an event of this size" or "we had lots of unfortunate events happen on the day" and then feeling miffed about hard earned cash going down the drain.
Is this everyone's experience with independent events or have we made a string of unlucky choices? Though tbf with the COL rises I can't see us paying out for anything like it for a while!