The organisers of an Oktoberfest festival said they will "take forward some important lessons" after receiving a flood of complaints from angry customers.
Oktoberfest UK describe themselves as the "UK’s biggest operator of authentic German beer festivals". However, attendees at an event in Anglesey on Saturday night complained of long queues and waits for drinks - as North Wales Live reports.
Customers responded to post on the company's Facebook page to brand the event "embarrassing". A user named Mazzy Moo said: "I am so angry about tonight.
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"We queued for an hour to get in the barn in the freezing cold. 17.15-1815 finally got in and were told it was an hour and a half queue for the bar, so we left. So many people went straight in and then immediately out because of it. I won't be the only one, but I expect a refund for mine and my husband’s ticket. What a waste of an evening!"
Belinda Woodward said: "How embarrassing for a beer festival to make people wait and an hour and a half for beer! We queued for an hour and a half to get in thinking we would be OK for drinks as we had a table with table service...... oh wait no! They stopped table service as the demand on the bar was too much! Our table will be expecting a full refund."
William Owen Roberts said: "Disappointed. Massive queue to get in and then over an hour's queue to get a drink. The music was great but you need a bigger bar area!!" Organisers have responded to the complaints in a statement posted yesterday.
It said: "Our first event in Anglesey did not start without its problems." They said the queue to get in had been "controlled but it was slow", and that this was down to security searches which were required by the licence and could not be avoided. The statement said: "If we were to do it again we would introduce an additional queueing system by using more than one entrance to speed up the process."
Addressing the wait for drinks, the organisers said: "There were numerous technical issues on the bar at the start of the event which meant the bar provider couldn't get drinks out fast enough to begin with and subsequently a large queue began to form which then took over an hour to totally service and resume normal service.
"Working with new suppliers in a new location always comes with its challenges and while we are grateful for the hard work put in by everyone on the bar, we have bought our relationship with them to a close today with immediate effect. As a team we all pulled together to help and worked at full capacity until the queue had been completely serviced."
Organisers thanked those customers who "rode the storm and stayed until the end to enjoy the full experience", and said they'd received positive feedback form those who stayed.
The statement continued: "The event was not perfect, and for us as a team it's disappointing to know that some people’s enjoyment was impacted after we worked so hard on the event. We will be taking forward some important lessons to ensure no issues like this happen again.
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