Member III
I drove past a 30 or 40 mile long Trump train of cars on the free way several of them turned off to attend the highly anticipated Offroad show in scottsdale AZ. Parking was a little over a 1/2 mile away with no shuttle service but, it was just before noon and a cool 95 degree hike in. Hey it's a dry heat... Kind of like hiking through a hair dryer... Hey I am desert overlander no big deal...
I was pretty happy the ticket office line was very short maybe 3 people. So, I stepped up to the window and found out they stopped selling tickets to the event but, were still letting people with tickets in.... Wow! Why didn't I get tickets on line? They were only $2 cheaper and I didn't feel like going through the trouble... I decided to stick around the ticket booth to see if they were going to start selling again and lucky me a guy had an extra ticket... Great... yes, I did pay a scalper price but only $5 extra...
I jumped in the entry line at noon with only 30 or so people in front of me it was then I found out they were not letting people in because to many people were inside... You have to wonder, they knew how many tickets they sold how can there be too many people... Well it's the CV19 thing even though the city of scotsdale approved this they decided shut it down after 4 hours the first day... At first we were told to wait an hour because they were hoping to open it back up, one turned into two, then three with the same message we hope we will be able to open back up. Keep in mind they did not close the show they just stopped letting people go in. There were several thousands of people in there and we got to watch them stream out with all the cool things they bought in side... People leaving had no idea of what was going on outside as they left and many of them complained the beer line was two hours long... We often rebutted with we have been waiting 3 hours just to get in...
The line outside was at least 2000 people with tickets waiting to get in it dwindled down to about 40 die hard individuals by 4:30 when they finally came out to tell us the city of scottsdale was not letting anyone in. They offered to give the 40 or so people tickets for the show on Sunday and the organizers were very cooperative with instructing how to do that... They also informed us how to get a refund on line because a lot of people were from california. Keep in mind if you were one of the thousands who left you did not get the refund message... I felt real bad a lot of the people standing around me had come 4 or 5 hours to attend the show some even flew in and had hotel rooms for the weekend.
The real problem was some people did not want to wear a mask and the city does not have the force of law to make them so, they decided to make their point by shutting down the event instead... Of course for hours they left a couple thousand people standing next to each other 6 or 7 people wide in a 1/4 mile long line. It was 100 plus degrees with no water or facilities...
So I checked on line this morning and found out the city of scottsdale decided to shut the show down today (Sunday) so it is over...
Did I mention they did NOT shut the very large "Home show" right next door down... And the people selling tickets in front of the home show were telling people they had air conditioning in there and I was also told the Off road show was going to be shut down very soon anyway... They were telling people this an hour before the Off road show was closed... I wonder how many scotsdale politicians had a vested interest in the "Home show"?
My advice do not bother attending any trade shows in the big cities...
I was pretty happy the ticket office line was very short maybe 3 people. So, I stepped up to the window and found out they stopped selling tickets to the event but, were still letting people with tickets in.... Wow! Why didn't I get tickets on line? They were only $2 cheaper and I didn't feel like going through the trouble... I decided to stick around the ticket booth to see if they were going to start selling again and lucky me a guy had an extra ticket... Great... yes, I did pay a scalper price but only $5 extra...
I jumped in the entry line at noon with only 30 or so people in front of me it was then I found out they were not letting people in because to many people were inside... You have to wonder, they knew how many tickets they sold how can there be too many people... Well it's the CV19 thing even though the city of scotsdale approved this they decided shut it down after 4 hours the first day... At first we were told to wait an hour because they were hoping to open it back up, one turned into two, then three with the same message we hope we will be able to open back up. Keep in mind they did not close the show they just stopped letting people go in. There were several thousands of people in there and we got to watch them stream out with all the cool things they bought in side... People leaving had no idea of what was going on outside as they left and many of them complained the beer line was two hours long... We often rebutted with we have been waiting 3 hours just to get in...
The line outside was at least 2000 people with tickets waiting to get in it dwindled down to about 40 die hard individuals by 4:30 when they finally came out to tell us the city of scottsdale was not letting anyone in. They offered to give the 40 or so people tickets for the show on Sunday and the organizers were very cooperative with instructing how to do that... They also informed us how to get a refund on line because a lot of people were from california. Keep in mind if you were one of the thousands who left you did not get the refund message... I felt real bad a lot of the people standing around me had come 4 or 5 hours to attend the show some even flew in and had hotel rooms for the weekend.
The real problem was some people did not want to wear a mask and the city does not have the force of law to make them so, they decided to make their point by shutting down the event instead... Of course for hours they left a couple thousand people standing next to each other 6 or 7 people wide in a 1/4 mile long line. It was 100 plus degrees with no water or facilities...
So I checked on line this morning and found out the city of scottsdale decided to shut the show down today (Sunday) so it is over...
Did I mention they did NOT shut the very large "Home show" right next door down... And the people selling tickets in front of the home show were telling people they had air conditioning in there and I was also told the Off road show was going to be shut down very soon anyway... They were telling people this an hour before the Off road show was closed... I wonder how many scotsdale politicians had a vested interest in the "Home show"?
My advice do not bother attending any trade shows in the big cities...