DLD 2013 retrospective

Nitpicking here, but the BA Dark Lords were $10 each for 10 oz. pours, which is roughly half of the bottle price. Not like they're making a killing on the barrel aged taps (though, to be fair, the bottle sales would seem to make up for it).

 

One head scratcher I had was the idea behind the 'controlled' break in the bottle allocation line to allow access to a section of porta potties on the west side of Indiana Pkwy. This was a premium line cutter staging area. Yeah there were two security personnel there tasked with that section but it seemed ripe for cutters. One guy we spoke to said he did it and I'm sure others did as well. They could have placed those porta potties elsewhere and eliminated that gap. Small quibble I know.

 

Since we're sharing some pics, this was my attempt to snap a picture of my 2011 PVW BBDL pour. I'm sure this echoed most people's vision on Saturday too


And kudos to FFF for putting on a great event. Among all the previously mentioned improvements I can't stress enough how key the Porta-Pottys were. This was a beautiful site when you had to go.

 

5th Dark Lord Day for me. What a great day! Except for having E tickets...I'll complain about that in a bit. (As the Dark Lord is my witness, I will clear all weekends, from St Patrick's Day to DLD, in order to go at a moment's notice to the brewpub to get A tickets from now on. I am done with the online sale nonsense!!!) Loved the festival atmosphere, wide open spaces, beer and merchandise tents, and great beer selection.

We got to the south line at 6:15am, met our group that had been there since 4am. We were still able to find street parking, but I imagine it was all gone by 7am. There were only about twenty five people in line ahead of us in the south line. I think the two gates really helped with crowd control. The south gate didn't have the annoying late morning-arriving gate crashers, probably due to the majority of people arriving on Superior Ave (north gate) vs Progress Ave (south gate) a block away. We sat with our cooler and chairs and drank the morning away. Along with some Munster Donuts, great weather, and portapotties galore--couldn't have asked for more!

Got through the gate and bag search with no problems. We were some of the first in line for the BA vanilla DL. I got two glasses, and ended up selling one to a guy waiting in line because I am nice...if I had kept both for myself, I wouldn't have been able to drive home I never intended to stay the whole day to E ticket time, so I left around 11am. I went back at 7pm to get line with my E ticket. I figured the line wouldn't be too bad since the sale would be half over by then. Wrong! I waited in line from 7pm and got my beer at 9:30pm. I should've just showed up at 9pm and only waited thirty minutes like a few people said they did in earlier posts, but I was afraid to go later than the posted 6-8pm sales time, if they did indeed stop sales at 8pm. Oh well, I did get to stand with two guys from Michigan, the hockey player and the massively drunk lawyer. Drunk lawyer lurched forward and accidentally threw a glass of DL all over his buddy. OH, THE HUMANITY! It was a sticky mess, it was all down his face, looked like he got stabbed in the head! I had napkins and handiwipes in my purse, because as with my own children, you have to be prepared for anything And the BeerGeeksPub.com hoodie guy in front of us was good to talk to too. It was an entertaining 2.5hr wait in line, to be sure! Drunk lawyer's ticket fell apart in his pocket at some point, and they wouldn't sell him his DL without the detached stub! I feel horribly, hilariously awful for that poor guy.

Dear 3Fs peeps, if you do read through these posts to glean ideas to make planning changes for next year---the DL purchase line needs major restructuring. The lines after A and B sucked. My husband had B tickets, and he and his guest got through in thirty minutes, when I had E tickets and waited 2.5. You can't sell an equal amount of tickets for each group, while allowing earlier ticket holders to enter later than their stated group time, and expect that each group will only take two hours. If, for whatever reason you don't get your DL at your ticketed group time, too bad so sad, you will have to go to the "second chance line" at the very end of the day, after the last ticketed group time. This would encourage people to get their beer at their actual ticketed time, not wait until the end of the day and make the D and E line be delayed two hours. Also, more signs and maps would be helpful, and more minions for line control. Someone in an earlier post mentioned handing out the golden tickets outside--that would prevent line cutting. If you don't wait your turn in line, you don't get a golden ticket. Good job, and even with the ticket line problems, it the best organized Dark Lord Day yet!

 

I wholeheartedly agree that allowing ticket holders to pick up their bottles across a few days would alleviate the issue with the bottle line. But it completely goes against what Dark Lord Day originally was intended to be:

I think if you spread out bottles over multiple days, you basically kill off the "festival where participants can meet other beer enthusiasts, sample beers from all over the world, buy your Dark Lord, eat, listen to live music, and generally have a great time."

I for one would rather stand in line. I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed the bottle line this year.

 

It wasn't just the last group that was bad. I had B, got in line at 11:40 am and didn't get my allocation until 1:40.

Canis

 

is that nate nelson's head photobombing?

 

True, but the B sale time was 12-2. You at least got out before the "end" of your group time. The E sale was 6-8, but I got mine at 9:30, and there were at least a hundred people still in line behind me.

 

Ha! Glad it wasn't just me. I walked up to Tony to introduce a new friend from TX. He just looks the guy dead in the eye and says, "Get out of my way." The only words he spoke to him. I had fun trying to explain that one.

 

That it is true. I'm sure there were some people in B who got out after 2, either way, once one group is late then so are the others (snowball effect). I don't know what else they can do to ease congestion. 1000+ people(for each group) to get in and out in under 2 hours is a challenge.

Canis

 

I was group B and got in line around Noon and had to wait over 2 hours. When I got to the brewery, I found the problem. They were letting in a grand total of 3-5 people at a time to scratch off their golden tickets and purchase DL, which caused a huge bottle neck for people scratching off tickets. Next year I recommend handing the scratch offs 50 or so people back from the brewery doors in order to have a more smooth transition into buying DL allocations.

 

Exactly...DLD is not about efficiency...the end goal is cool and all...but the journey kicks the shit out of it IMNSHO.

 

If you're in Group E you end up fighting off bro-bags and people who are only there to "kill it on Craigslist" for nearly 4hrs. Not super fun...we tried but just ended up drunk, pissed off, and on backpage.com.

 

Craft beer profiteers need to die.

 

There seems to be a marked difference of opinion between those who were in A and B and those who were in D and E.