This year(2012) was the 8th year of the Firestone Walker Brewery’s Oaktoberfest festival at the Avila Beach Golf Resort in Avila Beach, CA. This is the first year we attended, and I have to say we were sorely disappointed overall. First, it cost $ 25+ ticket fees(so closer to $ 30) to get in, and you get 1 beer ticket. After that, it costs $ 6 per beer ticket, or 4 for $ 20. So not cheap if you go by price per beer(even if you were able to drink 9 beers over the whole event, it would still average $ 7.22 a beer). They did have live entertainment(a few local bands) but they were nothing to write home about. There was also food for purchase, but that was expensive too. The biggest problem though, is that even though the tickets say the event is from 11:00am to 4:00pm, they stopped serving beer at 3:45WITHOUTTELLINGTHEATTENDEES! We were saving 8 tickets to have a drink all together at the end, and when we walked up to a beer booth at 3:47, they said they couldn’t pour any for us!!! So we were stuck with $ 40 worth of worthless beer tickets. We couldn’t even get our money back. And for the record, we don’t have a problem with last calls being 15mins before closing, but no one at the event had any indication ahead of time that this was going to happen. They could have at least told the band to make an announcement, but nope. We had heard later that it was the Event Coordinators and Firestone employees that just wanted to leave early, but that might just be rumor. Needless to say, we will NOT be back next year, and are disappointed with both the Firestone Walker Events management and the Avila Beach Events management. We were left with such a negative feeling there at the end that I’m going to think twice before purchasing any more Avila Beach Golf Resort event tickets.
