A firework display that charged £30 per car to attend left families disappointed after allegedly becoming overcrowded and unmanageable.
The Sky Magic display in Driffield, east Yorkshire, billed the tickets as an easy way to pre-book a slot and watch from your own vehicle, reports Hull Live.
But despite the stress-free promises, the event turned into a "shambles" according to many who paid for tickets in advance, who said there were long queues and not much on offer in terms of entertainment.
The company behind the event at the Driffield Showground faced a social media backlash and appeared to spend the evening deleting negative comments from their posts.
On Saturday, however, the company issued an explanation for the difficulties at the event, although they did not apologise to customers.
Stacey Sewell had taken her two sons, aged three and seven, her partner and her in-laws to the event and said she was glad she'd paid for their tickets otherwise she would have been embarrassed for making them go.
She said: "We queued for ages getting in and out, it was 50 minutes on the way in and then another 50 minutes on the way out in the end.
"The parking on the website when you pre-booked was a bay that you could sit in and watch the fireworks but when we got there it was just the car park with other people that hadn't booked so they we're squeezing all the cars next to each other.
"You probably could have watched the display from there if you all sat in single file right next to someone else's car."
The Sky Magic event was advertised as an "unforgettable evening of live radio entertainment, competitions and giveaways, quality local catering and an outstanding professional firework display".
Stacey said: "I barely ended up spending any time with my kids enjoying the display, we were queuing for the food for an hour after someone had already asked if we'd pre-booked it.
"While we were in the queue there was someone doing a fire display in the distance but we didn't know what was happening because the PA had broken and there was no sound.
"They'd just let far too many people in, they said they'd been told by health and safety that they had to let people in that hadn't got a ticket but had turned up but that doesn't sound right to me.
"In the end it just felt like a money-grab and they'd ignored any capacity that they'd planned for and at the end of the day it is the people that had booked that had really lost out."
Sky Magic Events took to Facebook to offer an explanation after receiving "lot of feedback" about the display.
They said: "We received overwhelming numbers who arrived without pre-booking tickets, we had no option following health and safety guidelines to allow entry to the cars and public.
"This unexpectedly doubled our attendance to the event.
"Catering teams were advised based on our attendance last year and the amount of pre-booked tickets at the beginning of the week with an increase to cover those who had not pre-booked. We were let down by two other caterers at the last minute.
"We employ a professional security team to manage the car parking and movement of vehicles, this is the same team we used at this event last December with no issues, however, there were double the amount of vehicles to move this year.
"Great Driffield Radio suffered problems with their wifi connection and were unable to broadcast live at the event.
"They have never encountered this problem before, last year at our Sky Magic Driffield and Scampston events there were no problems and earlier testing in the day produced no issues.
"We will be taking on board all feedback and will be making significant changes along with our teams regarding the display for next year. In the meantime, it would be appreciated if any feedback could be constructively and politely offered.
"We will contact those who have messaged in due course."
