Here’s all you need to know… Winterfest tickets go on-sale at noon (CST) December 1, 2011. Tickets will go FAST.
Come and join us for the 11th Annual Winterfest! This craft beer sampling event celebrates beer brewed in Minnesota by the breweries and brew pubs that are current members of the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild. Chase out the winter chill with a multitude of Winter Warmers, hearty food, beer education, entertainment and music.
For event specific details, visit:
www.mncraftbrew.org/festivals/winterfest
Ticket Price: $55 + processing fees | Limit (4) per purchaser
Follow this link to order tickets: http://www.tempotickets.com/winterfest2012
Over-under on the website staying up long enough for the tickets to sell out?
This year I say it sells out by 12:01pm. They keep raising the ticket price, but people dont seem to mind. Im guessing tickets could be 100 a piece and it would still sell out. I cant justify the cost anymore.
I say 10 seconds
Andy-true. It sold out in a minute last year, so it wont make it longer then that, even with the decrease to a 4 ticket max. Should have made it 2.
Agreed…I gave up on this festival a long time ago….Beer dabbler is less costly and tickets still available
Beer Dabbler is half the cost, and half the quality.
First year in the last four where I won’t be going. $55 plus fees (so $60) is reaching my limit for this sort of festival. It’s great beer, but I just can’t spend that much.
Darn it. I could never get the dropdown box for the quantity to work.
See you all at ArborFest.
Did that really sell out in 12 seconds or is the website just that bad?
same problem with the drop down on two different browsers
I tried two different browsers on two different computers. I then remote connected to work and launched IE and got the same problem. Tempo Tickets is yet another vendor that can not handle the rush.
Ticket Update:
If you were unable to select a quantity at the time of purchase it is because the tickets were no longer available. This was confirmed with our ticketing vendor that it was not an error, simply there were none available. They have confirmed that they will work to make this less confusing for future on-sale events. There were more people online to purchase then there were tickets available and the purchasers were queued up immediately to the millisecond to complete the transaction. Thank you for supporting Minnesota beer!
The dropdown provided options when tickets were available, but if you didn’t proceed fast enough, you still got “None Available.” When no options were in the dropdown, no tickets were available. I had 4 selected, but got rejected on the next page.
The tickets purchases were completed as you were completing your process. Everything happened extremely quickly. Tempotickets verified that their queue process was to the millisecond.
I got the site to display about 15 seconds after 12, and there were no quantities available to choose. Sold out in 15 seconds?
If I were the marketing whiz for MNCBG I would make sure that craft beer selling liquor stores have a supply of tickets that require purchase of a MN craft beer before you can purchase tickets. The stores could do all sorts of promotions and really get some traffic from this method. I believe the guild is “for” increased sales of their members. Wouldn’t it be better that the stores and breweries make a little more rather than an online ticket seller who could give a crap who the hell buys them.
This computer thing is silly. It’s all dependent on your connection/ hub location etc. whether you get tickets or not.
I’m the Director of Marketing for Tempo Tickets and I can confirm that the entire ticket inventory was spoken for in less than 10 seconds and that there were no systematic failures. If you weren’t able to drop down a quantity it means that no tickets were available. Our system calculates the order of ticket buyers to the 1,000,000th second so those that selected their quantity first received tickets first. A tip for next time, we calculate our time based on the US Government atomic clocks so synchronize with that in order to be there the second we’re on sale! Thanks to all that visited our site today!
I kind of agree with MinnesotaMike, getting tickets has gotten too dependent on technological factors, some of which are beyond the individual’s control. Since the MNCBG admits the whole thing is “somewhat of a natural online lottery,” perhaps they should go all the way and make it a real lottery. People would have a week to submit their names and number of tickets needed, and they could get unique number in return. Then a drawing could be conducted for the right to buy tickets. The winning numbers could be published, and those people would have, say, a week to purchase tickets. If tickets are still left after that, more numbers could be drawn until the tickets are gone.
This would allow people who have poor internet connections, didn’t sync to the right time, didn’t refesh their browser cache, or have to work at 12 on Dec. 1, to participate. Plus, it would eliminate the annual carping about whether the ticket vendor web site processed everything fairly without crashing.
+1 to the lottery idea. This is ridiculous. I was able to select my one ticket (yes, I wanted one, so only selected one) but then the website kicked me out of the process.
And as I’ve said in a couple of other forums, I really think this event has become popular enough that a two-ticket limit is really needed to ensure that more people have a fair shot at tickets. There’s already at least one person on Twitter who pretty much admitted that they got more than they needed just to sell them. The two-person limit can’t prevent this from happening, but at least it’s more difficult.
I completely agree with @Jared re: Winter Beer Dabbler – every year, problems with lines and toilets. They allow more people than they have facilities to accommodate. Couldn’t have said it better myself – half the price, half the quality.
I like mnbeerdrinker’s lottery idea. Certainly beats rearranging my work schedule just so I can try and fail at getting tickets.
The liquor stores, brewpubs, and breweries could each have their own lotteries. Simply get half of tickets to them and let them use the tickets as promotions. The whole point of the MNCBG is to expand craft beer in MN. You might even end up with free tickets if you let’s say, buy 4 six packs of MN beer each week for 4 weeks or whatever, in order to get in the free lottery. 1 six pack and you pay full price if your name is pulled. If you occupy a bar stool everyday at a brewpub and don’t fall off, you get a ticket. Whatever. No extra cost for tickets and the breweries get some benefit.