Yesterday, Dos XX held an event at Falkenstein Castle that featured free food, music, food, and entertainment. It was an ambitious event with a large amount of promotion, and it should have been a lot of fun. Instructors including Bear Grylls were on hand to teach interesting and eclectic skills. The whole event was centered on Dos XX's "Most Interesting Man in the World" campaign. Unfortunately, the promotion worked too well and overwhelmed the seemingly poor organization of the whole affair.
1793 people RSVP'd on Do512 but apparently only about 800 got in. That leaves 1000 people that were on an RSVP list without access. To add to the fact that they didn't get in, people had to wait in line in 105 degree weather with no information coming from the organizers. Just read the comments on the event listing on Do512 (scroll down the page).
Are events that hard to organize? Really? This was put on by a major company, this wasn't the Rock for Independence Fest or Thunder of the Gods which were put on by clueless promoters. This event had a lot of promotion and a large budget, but fell into the same traps as other failed events. Is it that much to ask to close an RSVP list instead of leaving it open indefinitely? If the organizers knew the castle would only hold 800, why did they allow more than double that on a list that was supposed to guarantee entry?
If you were there and would like to share your experience, please do so in the comments.
Update July 17: Dos Equis issued an apology, check it out here. Also it sounds like there were a lot more than 800 actually inside the castle. It would be interested to know more exact numbers of people that got in versus those that weren't able to.
Comments
Wow- what a cluster****.
No kidding! It just blows my mind that organizers don't plan for this stuff.
thanks for getting all the mis-information out there! i am personally e~mailing everyone i have ever spoken to about how horrible this event, and lets not kid ourselves, the beer is ... green glass sucks
I actually had a great time. I waited like 5 minutes for a shuttle to the castle from the parking lot. Had 1st rounds of all the food & Dos Equis, including the edible entomology. The music was good, as were the specialty acts. I even got a "most interesting" haircut at the barber shoppe. But this is all because I drove myself instead of taking the shuttle from Downtown. The planning was poor though.
I drove there, and I got fU-cked over. The best part reading about it is the people who drove and filled up the very first parking lot way ahead of me, and they still didn't get in because the promoters 'forgot' about getting them. Their excuse is that they thought they booked more charter buses than they actually did, which is a lame excuse if there ever was one. This disaster may very well have backfired on Dos Equis' reputation, all that marketing/promotion money down the drain!
Actually there were far more than 800 people who got in, my guess would be closer to 2500-it was PACKED. To clarify, Do512 was in NO WAY involved with the logistics or planning of the event. All we did was help promote it & run RSVP's-we werent even paid a penny to do that. I think one main problem was that the promoters had too many RSVP lists out there (Do512, Rare, Facebook),and there was poor communication as to how many RSVPs were actually being collected. Typically less than 50% of RSVPs actually show up, so I dont blame them for gathering more RSVP's than capacity-to ensure that the event has a good turnout and is successful. But I dont think anyone anticipated that such a high percentage of RSVP's would actually show up (considering its 65miles away and on a wed). Either way, the Do512 crew had a blast, XX was nice enough to provide us w/ a bus, the event was awesome on the inside (just wish the beer were colder). We're just very sorry for the folks that had a bad experience
I for one will never drink a Dos Equis again. Apparently Rare Magazine's RSVP list was 3,600 people long according to Earthbird Music, so Rare is probably the one we should be boycotting.
Why send out directions to your RSVP'ers if those that follow them won't even get into the event, and those that blatantly don't listen to said directions, cops, planners, etc are able to just walk in? Why even have an RSVP list if you're not checking names? Why not tell people that when they say "parking", they actually mean "a field full of cow patties that you will have to wait in a 2 hour line in for a shuttle, with no guaranteed entrance"?? Then, if people still chose to put themselves through that hell, they did it with a clear understanding of 'no guarantees'. Why... why... why... I could go on forever.
Whoever was responsible for that disaster owes me $20 in gas and 8 hours of dignity. The dignity portion we can arrange in the form of waterboarding.
"Either way, the Do512 crew had a blast, XX was nice enough to provide us w/ a bus, the event was awesome on the inside"
You dirty mother F*cker. you have the nerve to post that crap after there have been so many posts on how we all got screwed and stood in cow crap? Way to go douche, glad the event promoters had a blast ...thats what counts after all.
Sorry for those who didnt get in, we drove for fear of the bus lines, schedules, etc. Once we got there (7:45) the organizers didnt even look up our names. There had to be close to 2,000 peeps in there. I took "the most intresting poop" the next day
Steve:
Wow. I dont know if I can be more clear about this. Do512 was NOT the event promoters, we had NOTHING to do with the event logistics, and we didnt get paid a penny to promote the event. All we did is run RSVP's on Do512. We are very sorry that you and many others had such a negative experience. There were definitely many problems with the logistics and the management of the crowds on site, and it is my understanding that the agency in charge f the event is looking for a way to make it up to those who made the drive and got screwed. All I'm saying is that many of the people who DID get into the event had a great time, and were unaware of the problems you and so many others had to endure. Again we're sorry that happened, but I want you to recognize that we're not the ones you should be directing your frustration to.
-Do512_Jimmy (aka. Dirty Mother F*cker Douche)
1st of all, anyone who's ever thrown any kind of party, even a birthday party, knows that 100% of a list NEVER shows up. All the best planned events over book, hell even airlines do it. So, the title to your article is WRONG and a stupid assumption.
Secondly, get over it. There will be more parties and all the people who didn't get it will have yet another chance to cry over their keyboards.
If you want to get into a party, get there early. Lesson learned.
This Dos Equis controversy is a battle of incompetent VS. immature. Read here to see which side you fall on:
www.nitesblog.com/2009/07/i-dont-always-complain-about-free.html
You should have gotten there earlier, dipshits. Multiple announcements were released saying that capacity WOULD be reached. I had a bunch of people with me and we had a blast. Best castle party ever!
Oh, like as in earlier than 6pm when the doors were to open at 7pm? Gee wilikers. Guess we should have gotten there at noon. I knew it was iffy and knew we'd have a long wait, and was 100% fine with that...but after two hours in the parking lot were the first of those who drove out there were put, finding out that we were turned away because the people who got there WAY after we did all got in without so much as being checked off a list or carded is going to sting a little. There was no rhyme or reason to who made it in. You could have been there at 4pm and not gotten in or arrived at 8:15 and made it. It was poorly organized. Period.
hey IDIOTS, ya should've gotten there THREE Days ago! DUH, didnt' you focking KNOW? Me and the Dos Equis Executive Branch had a F-u-ckin BLA** though, sorry all you FAAGG0TZ who stood around for three hours like morons! Should'a gotten there in a helicopter! Duh! Now Pick yourself up by the bootstraps and pay to bail out my bank!!
Alek, hilarious and awesome post!
Do512_Jimmy, your cluelessness is shocking. Here in Austin, thousands of ANGRY people are telling their friends about this event right now, and your site's reputation is taking a big hit. Who's going to trust Do512 or Rare Magazine promotions in the future?
As one of the lucky ones,who was able to party all night,I have a few comments,food was great, site was amazing,talked to the caterer he served 4200 meals never ran out of beer,made a grocery run around 9 to pick up more food and water to make sure they didn't run out.The crowd was stinkin happy up top,I feel really bad for the people that didn't make it up.
But seriously folks,pack a cooler,with beer and drinks and have a tailgate party while you wait and if you don't get in at least you got a great story,light show(talked to a friend 7 miles from the castle ) and they could hear the music perfect and said the lights were awesome so they partied in their yard.It seems the promoters totally underestimated the amount of people who wanted to show up and party but then who could guess ( Wednesday out in BFE).
I did have the pleasure of meeting one of the owners of the castle and she was just about bawling about her gardens,she was cool though,said have a great time,and put up your trash
Lofland, I have no idea what you are talking about. No one but you (apparently) sees this as Do512 fault, any more than they see it as FAcebooks fault (where RSVP's were also accepted). We werent the producers, promoters, or sponsors of this event, we just listed it and ran rsvp's. And as it turned out, we were one of the majority of people who went who made it in and it was an awesome party.
Do512 provides free event listings and lists over 1500 events per week. Maybe from now on we shouldnt allow events to be listed until we dig deep on all of their logistics---parking situation, catering, capacity, security, sound/lights, etc. Hell maybe I should have gone out there and met with the Burnet police myself, to clear some of this up. As someone mentioned on the Out and About blog---perhaps Facebook should do the same? I mean they list events and run RSVPs to. C'mon, man.
Looking back at this post and the comments, I hope that it's clear that when I spoke of the "organizers", I was not talking about Rare, Do512 or other promoters.
I hope I didn't cause any confusion. The organizing company was called Mirrorball. Rare and Do512 were promoters and, like Jimmy from Do512 said, were not responsible for the poor logistics and organization.
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