Yesterday I had the pleasure? of going to the show with my daughter and 2 young grandchildren.
Things have changed since last time I went when my own children were younger.
No longer can you just rock up and buy a ticket to enter, You have to buy online and tickets for yesterday were sold out a few days beforehand. Hold that thought.
You could also buy a ride ticket package online. This was $110 for $150 worth of rides. I'd say just about everyone must have bought this.
I have never been to a poorer organised function than this, Well, I have, but not a big public function.
Firstly, we left home quite early 8.30am, as the show doesn't open till about 9.30am I think it is.
We were within 1km just before 10am. We were still in that traffic grid at 11.30am. We were in the street running alongside the show grounds and could see further bad news. The gate that was open had a crowd on the right hand side that stretched right to the end and round the corner, at least an hour's wait for those folk to get in.
But we had time to notice another thing. Those approaching on the left of the gate or crossing the road were just milling right in and going through.
In the end we gave up on the carpark, my daughter turned in the opposite direction and we parked a km away and walked.
Not a policeman in sight helping with traffic.
We saw another entrance with a queue stretching for miles but used our knowledge to walk back to the middle entrance and got through fairly quickly. There was no one there helping out the crowd. If I had been in the right hand queue waiting for an hour and saw others rriving and going through on the LHS, I would have been livid.
Once inside, we could not just go on any rides. The ticket card had to be redeemed at a special ride concession stall. My daughter waited for an hour in that line. An hour. No one in that line was happy.
Once you have the card, you then had to line up for a ride, which is normal but another wait.
But given the organisers knew how many ride concession cards had been sold, why did they not have more booths open for people to collect these? I know a little bit of a wait is expected but one hour is too much.
To add insult to injury, each time you used the card, an 8% fee was charged so you didn't actually end up with $150 credit to use.
I wanted to take the kids to the animal nursery but the wait line for that was about 90 minutes in the hot (to us) sun.
All in all, the hold ups-traffic, getting in, getting the ride concession card etc took up half our day and we hardly got to see anything. The rides were good when we finally went on some.
The show bag pavillion was not crowded, that surprised me.
Prices were high. A small soft drink $5.50. Ouch.
If you live in Melbourne and plan on going, feel free to PM me for the name of the closest streets where you can park for free and no permit is needed.
The whole thing could and should have been better organised, given everyone there already had pre bought tickets and the organisers knew what to expect.
