Another day, another so-called “unlimited” festival turns out to be poorly organized and leaves people hangry.
New York has seen brunch go bad, a pizza party turn out to have very little of either pizza or partying, and an African food festival representing the entire continent with just two vendors in an overheated tent.
But we don’t have a monopoly on poorly organized food events. This time, the disappointing festival was the Giant Cheese Board in London.
People paid about $40 for what was supposed to feel like you’re “in a giant’s kitchen” including people dressed as mice (those Brits know how to party, or something?) with a “massive, oversized cheese board” of unlimited options from all over Europe, plus free mulled wine, cheesecakes, giant mice and a fireplace.
However, as one Facebook commenter put it, “We were there until around 4:30pm and I’ve seen happier faces at a wake.”
My favourite kind of disappointment is the pure, unabashed, middling rage of middle class people disappointed with a shit wine and cheese festival #GiantCheeseBoard pic.twitter.com/c3CbgcvuUX
— Tom Capon (@TomCapon) December 16, 2017
#GiantCheeseboard this is one of the most depressing things I’ve seen pic.twitter.com/Ufs8rz3sHK
— petestravelogue (@petestravelogue) December 16, 2017
The people struggle for the last scraps of Camembert. The suffering has gone on too long. pic.twitter.com/Qtyd7CBodE
— Tom Capon (@TomCapon) December 16, 2017
Cannot overstate how bleak this is pic.twitter.com/9j9uaDS7sD
— Kate Solomon (@katiesol) December 16, 2017
To sum it up, another commenter referenced the OG disaster Fyre Festival’s organizer: “Ja Rule is reading this post and is thinking you guys fucked up.”
The event took place over Saturday and Sunday of last weekend, and it seems the experience you had depended on which day you went.
Beginning on Saturday, social media lit up with attendees claiming the event was an hour late to start, and once they got inside there were only five kinds of cubed British cheese, long lines for cold mulled wine, no cheesecake and a fire projected on the wall of the event’s parking garage. There were even chants of “we want a refund.”
And apparently, even if you were lucky enough to get some cheese, you didn’t want it. A person hired to work the event told British website RT, “What I saw upstairs in the cheese prep area was horrible.” He said cheese was being sliced by people without gloves who ate as they went along, and food was stored on the floor.
As the event’s page has been “accidentally deleted,” many of these complaints are gone.
What we do have is a lengthy defense by the organizers, in which they claim a couple of vendors canceled because of illness but otherwise the event went on as promised.
They also shared screenshots of four positive comments and images taken at the event that do seem to show piles of cheese, cheesecakes and decor like an inflatable moon made of cheese — photos that attendees say were taken on Sunday or after many other attendees had already given up and left.
Everyone agrees that the fake fireplace, however, is accurate.
There’s another session scheduled for Dec. 23, but some people aren’t willing to see for themselves which event they’ll be walking into.
