First off let’s give credit where credit is due. Thank you to all the suppliers, vendors, restaurants who took part in this event. It was great that so many people took the opportunity to sample beer that is not 'mainstream'.

Now the not so good:

1. This show was grossly oversold

2. According to the website there were over 140 beers and ciders available for sampling with over half being unavailable from the NSLC. Fair enough great selection for sure, but you should have also mentioned that they were only available in about 10 tents that were cramped together is the 'spacious venue.'

3. Thank you to Scanway Catering, Rudder's Seafood & The Port Pub for the food. The only beef I have with this is that the food was available at an extra cost. Remember ticket costs were $40

4. You are in need of better crowd control. A lot of people were jumping the fence to get admission to the event; no one even seemed to care.

5. We personally heard a lot of complaints from patrons who attended the event the past 2 years about how you really over sold the event. Some areas were just inaccessible.

6. The venue should be made more wheelchair accessible as well. We witnessed several people in wheelchairs that could not move freely about the area.

7. More supervision is required in the area. So many people were intoxicated, puking and the like with no one around to remove them from the premises.

8. Wow, what a young group of people. With the ease of gaining entrance, or purchasing tickets, people should have been required to show proper identification at the gate when presenting their ticket. There were not just a couple of people underage. I am willing to bet that there were at least 50 -100.

9. A good idea would be to have a tent in the centre of the venue where officers could be easily accessible just in case of an emergency. For example last evening we encountered a lady that was disorientated and lost her husband in the crowd. We took it upon ourselves to call a cell phone number the lady gave us to locate the missing husband, who was removed from the area.

I’ll give this event another try next year. Since the Coast is one of the sponsors of this event, I would suggest that they pay attention to the comments that are going to be made in the next few days.

This is a fair event. More thought needs to put into the planning, preparation and setup. Take a look at the success of the Port Of Wines Festival for tips and tricks on organization.

---Whineo