Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I just got back from Great American Food Fest. I agree with the last person,a wonderful idea when I read about it. I did not have too much problem with the long line to get in, although we experienced rude and unruly people almost fighting over a group of troublemakers who wanted to jump ahead in line. We reported this as it was happening to staff - but was told, "we are not the police, you will have to handle the situation yourself." The issues really began once we got inside the gates.There was no direction and no one to ask what to do. No programs were accessable.They were handing out photo copies at a information booth I had to search out. It looked like somebody printed copies from the website as an after thought.So then we decide to get our free plate of food.So we chose the BBQ because it seemed like you got the most food.So we went to the back of the line for the Texas BBQ,we had to almost guess which line it was because there was certainly no one to ask what to do.There was confusion also because some had wrist band some did not.Well the BBQ line was a block and half long,about one hour in to our two hour wait I could see alot of people were just cutting into short lines up in the front.So when we got close to the three service windows I asked the guy in the center line next to us how long he waited he said 9 minutes.So the long line was only being serviced by one window and the other two windows was servicing basically the people who were cutting.I don't blame those people they were probably confused also.Shoreline is to blame,I saw almost no security or efforts to control things or help people,it is almost like their crowd control plan was to let everyone in the gate and let it be a free-for-all.Two people need to be fired; the head of the organization and head of Security. If I was the Food Network I would be ashamed,but I know most of it was not their fault.