DECEPTION and dissapointment....
were my feelings about this event. And I am sure my daughter Tina,who came too, felt the same.
We were so excited to be going for a day out to meet new friends and discover lots of new products techniques, see demonstrations and generally enjoy our love of baking biscuits at this widely announced event.
A first time for Barcelona. I was especially looking forward to the icing techniques demos by Mark Tilling on behalf of Squires Kitchen, over from the U.K.
We travelled up to Barcelona by train and arrived just after 10am, which was when the fair opened. We went for a coffee,then 5minutes metro ride to Plaza de España, nearest stop.
When we walked out of the underground, we couldnt beleive our eyes: the que was interminable!
Well after a hunt round we found the end of the que,thanks to other peoples directions.
Weird!
There must have been about 3 or 4,000 people waiting to get in!
Just take a look at the photos to give you some idea.
We queued for 2.30hrs and were still in the Plaza de España! We had our FB pages open for any info as we were getting all sorts of crossed comentaries. In front a group of proffesionals from the sector, from Valencia,a family from Madrid, in fact from many parts of Spain.
We all had bought tickets in advance through internet ,supposedly to avoid the queues!
It was quite clear that there was BIG TROUBLE!
As a British ex-pat, I've always been used to queues of an hour or so in UK, here too,for that matter, in High Season to get in Port Aventura fun park.
But we knew there was only one pavillion for the Fair, so it didnt take much working out that an awful lot of tickets had been sold for a limited sized pavillion.
So far,we saw no one from the organisation,no crowd control security.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
So as we are good law abiding citizens, we just waited paitiently in the queue ,practically at a standstill. After a while,more than an hour, posts started going up on the FB page, by other people in the queue, wanting some sort of an explanation.......silence on behalf of the organisers! It wasnt until well after 12.45 that a loudspeaker announced that the were sorry, but for security reasons couldnt allow anyone else in and that they would return our ticket money!
I dont think I have EVER been to a trade fair in Madrid,Valencia,London where there has been such a total lack of organisation,together with more that a touch of AVARICE! We have since been told that over 8.000 tickets had been sold,when the maximum capacity was 1,500 people.
We were advised to put in a complaint to the Consumer association (OCU) as there were so many people involved, which we are in the process of doing. We also await news about having our money returned.
Well, I feel better now that's off my chest. But an awful lot of people were turned away last Saturday morning. I hope that something is done to stop these people organising future events.
When you sell tickets on line, you KNOW exactly how many you have sold. That makes it totally unacceptable to carry on selling tickets at the gate and on top of it all, allow those people in before others who had bought tickets in advance. MAD, all round.
We eventually got to take a photo outside the building---nearest we got to the fair!
Tina making sure we had proof we were there!
Yours truly!
AND THAT IS ALL I HAVE TO SAY ON THE MATTER.
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