Red Wine and Brew Las Vegas

Agree with the other posts. Terribly disorganized. I’ve been to beer festivals in tiny towns that had waaaay more to offer than this disaster of an event. I thought about giving it two stars because the bands were good, but the execution was so bad that it really deserves a single.

Red Wine And Brew Fest… lame as hell. Disorganized and the venue is far too small. Spent the entire time standing in ridiculous lines for everything.

Wow, what an experience…
I’m surprised that there wasn’t already a page created for this event. I’ll be the one to do it, since it is necessary to let everyone know how poorly executed this event was.
I believe that this is a yearly festival — this year’s event was at Mandalay Bay Beach on a Saturday night. Sounds great, right? WRONG!
It all started with the parking. There is only 1 garage at Mandalay Bay, and it just couldn’t handle the traffic. It couldn’t have just been the event, because this hotel hosts fights, concerts and lots of other events, especially on weekends. Parking was an absolute nightmare. We should’ve taken this as a clue and ran as fast as we could…
There was some confusion about the start time as well. My ticket said «doors open 8:15pm,» while my friend’s ticket said they opened at 8:00pm. We got there around 8:15pm and the line to get in was ridiculous. Strike 2 and yet another clue that we should’ve realized this wasn’t going to be a smooth event. Once we got to the front of the line (at least 30 – 40 minutes later), we realized that the issue was that there were only TWO people working the entry. 1 checking ID’s and 1 checking tickets. There were thousands of people going to this, and having 2 people at the door was crazy. Also, the people in line weren’t smart enough to have their ID’s out and ready to speed the process along…
We were THIRSTY once we got inside. To our dismay, all of the beer tents were right on top of each other and the lines were stupid long. We were there almost 3 hours — waited in line at Ballast Point for 1 beer, then immediately got in another line, which turned out to be for wine (no big deal). There was 1 person pouring and she was so overwhelmed, we felt horrible for her. After this (being in line for probably 30 minutes at each tent), we decided just to give up and sit in the sand to watch the bands. Quite a few of the tents ran out of beer/​wine/​cider long before the event ended — with people still in line. So frustrating.
There was a Groupon for this event. Tickets were available on House Seats and Mandalay Bay also offered discounted tickets to their employees. For the future: this is not an event you want to try and «sell out.» There were far too many people, not enough space or beer to accommodate them.
Even the cash bar, snack bar and food outlets had super long lines. It was really a clusterf*ck. We ended up leaving early to go home and order pizza and drink our own beer. Luckily, this was before most people left, so traffic wasn’t AS bad on the way out. It’s really disappointing, because this could have been a great event. Hopefully it’s better executed next year — I am sure there were A LOT of very upset folks who paid $ 50 for full price tickets (including fees).