Post #477376 by Afkarp's Moai on Sun, Aug 16, 2009 6:09 PM

So I don't know how to put this but there's a fine line between a lot of people having fun and way too many people squeezed into a space the size of a postage stamp. I've been to Tiki Oasis the last three years and this by far was the least enjoyable. Before you jump down my throat read my post just so you know what bugged me. Let's start Thursday night at the Bali Hai. I tried to stand in line for my wrist band 2X before dinner, but the line was just too long and moving way too slow. When we went to dinner, I knew it'd be slow, but they obviously either changed their food supplier at the restaurant or changed it for the night because the food quality definitely wasn't what it was last year. It's cool if my dinner costs $8, but paying $17 for top ramen mixed with bird's eye frozen vegetables didn't do it for me. After dinner, you guessed it, the line was still too long to get a wristband, so I proceeded to stand in line for 45 minutes to get a drink. After that, I kinda had it so we went back to the hotel. The next morning I got up at 7am went to go get a coffee, and on my way past the pool, I noticed that almost all the spaces were taken up already, mind you, it's 7am. So I had to run up to the room, get my pool crap, and camp out to save a seat. Later that afternoon, I finally went to get a wristband, but nobody was passing them out. But that night is where the fun really started. The band was setting up, so I went to go check on the line status for the wristbands. I scoped it out, realized that the wait would be at least 45 minutes and began to walk back to get my wife. That's when four polyester clad security guards wouldn't let me get past them. This was it, thing about it, I'm paying $160 for a hotel room, and I AM NOT ALLOWED TO GO TO MY FRICKIN HOTEL ROOM. Are you F'n kidding me? I'm not talking about going to the stage area, I'm talking about going up to my hotel room or the swimming pool. That was ridiculous and I don't think anyone thought about the consequences of hiring outside "security" without giving them the one up on what was going on. If you went to the room crawls, you know most of the evening ones were so crowded that you couldn't even talk to the people hosting the crawl. I know that there was at least one "fight" which is inevitable if everyone's trying to be in the same place at once and there's not enough room. Basically, I see this event as being about quality and not quantity and there were way too many tickets sold to groups of people from at least 3 different hotels, and basically this experiment didn't work. That's why they limit tickets sales at events. Too many people just creates a mess. Oh and the "first come, first served" theory for hotel rooms sucked. Why the hell did they ask you to put room room preferences in your email, if they had no intentions of honoring those requests? I mean if I signed up months ago for the event shouldn't that carry some clout? This isn't southwest airlines. I also know that some people had rooms held for them all the way until Saturday, WTF? Otto, I love what you've done in the past, and I applaud your efforts this year, but for Oasis 10, either limit ticket sales, choose a bigger venue, streamline some of the details or do all three. Either way, wristbands should be included in the room price, and given to people as they check into the hotel. If additional tickets to the show are sold, on a limited basis, to people not staying at the hotel, they could be a different color and good only during vending and show times, and those people should not be allowed in the pool area. I'm sorry, but if your only paying $60 at the Motel 6 an I'm paying nearly 3 times that much, you should use your own hotel's amenities so I can use mine. Now if you read this far, you can either agree or disagree with me, but honestly that was the experience I had this year.