Charlotte Bayou Festival

Well..How do I um. well. how do I start?What's the tell tale sign of a bad time? 100 degrees, 20 minutes of waiting, 2 beers and only 5 ft of progress. This was getting old fast and the lil' baby was comatose. I think that's a sign that we have to go. Luckily we got our refunds.For my other 8 friends who braved the heat...well let's just say they didn't even get back in line for seconds. Was it that bad? I don't know but it sure wasn't good enough to wait another 30 minutes in the hot sun.A poor excuse of a festival. Typical of any festival are the usual vendors selling the usual craft goods. I'd say it's safe to say that 98% of the festival wasn't cajun centric. Bad planning, horrible wait time and a just a bad weather day for an inaugural event.

Considering I never made it to the festival, my experience stems from a botched Living Social Deal. I had already planned a pretty busy weekend, but really was looking forward to attending this festival. The day of, I checked my email in the morning to find an apology letter from Living Social, telling me that they cannot honor the deal. (GULP).... Granted admission was $30 and the coupon really let you just pay $15.Ok... I was a little peeved to begin with, but was still willing to go especially since my friends were going to make an afternoon of it. I started searching to see if I could buy regular tickets online.... and found out the festival had been cancelled for 2013!! Good thing we didn't go out there and find out then - but I found it rather strange that they would offer that deal... take it away... and then have a cancellation. It was all shady in my eyes.After some more research - I found out that the Raleigh festival (put on by the same people) had a food scare... something about the questionable preparation and people ended up getting sick. Maybe it was a blessing that we didn't go, but I would definitely think twice before trying to go to this event again - apparently from previous years it was not a hot ticket event in CLT anyways.... :(

Well Yelpers everyone was completely right about this event. It was canceled do to poor practices and bad reviews. Anyone who thought about going... such as myself... seems we dodged a huge bullet. http://www.heraldsun.com/news/x383676942/Following-complaints-in-Durham-Bayou-festival-in-Concord-canceledStraight from facebook page"Unfortunately the Charlotte Bayou Festival will not be taking place at this time, we will host this event later this year in Charlotte at a different location. We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have put you and your company through. We thank our vendors, volunteers, sponsors, bands, and staff for your support and thank you for your service to the Charlotte Bayou Festival. Etix has refunded the money back to our customers, Living Social will be refunding money back also as soon as possible. I am sorry once again and hope that you accept my humble apology. Your understanding and patience is so very much appreciated. If you have further questions comments, or concerns about the Living Social refund please feel free to contact me via email [email protected]"

My mother was born and raised in south Louisiana. I brought her thinking it would be a great time spent to visit a Cajun venue for some "home" style cooking. Almost as soon as we got there, the dream started to fall apart. We had purchased tickets in advance online for the all you can eat Cajun food. Come to find out, we spent to much on them, as we still had to wait in line just to get past the entry to the food. The tickets shown by the staff there showed 25$ for a ticket, we payed almost 30$ online. The food they said they would have there, not even half was present. We had to wait in another line for the food as well, this took over 2 hours for my self to get 2 crawfish, and some snow crab legs? Sorry, snow crab is not Cajun. Blue crab was being sold outside the all you can eat zone. But overpriced, and not part of the all you can eat as previously described. I was lucky enough to find some nice people standing around that offered me a water bottle(thanks Valencia!), as I had already run out less than an hour into being in line. Bottom line, this festival failed. The stands were half somewhat Cajun, the other was corporate shilling. Verizon, bath fitters, and roof shingles? Got to be kidding me.The planning was inadequate at best. Next year, let's hope they have the right staff to plan everything in an orderly and safe manner.

DO NOT ATTEND!!! THIS EVENT IS A SCAM and the organizers are con-artists who endangered people's lives with completely unsafe food practices. Furthermore, the festival they describe on their website and the festival they put on were worlds apart. Several friends and I attended the festival in Durham this weekend. Here's the gist of what occurred:- Tickets were oversold by the thousands. They would have struggled handling 500 people let alone the 4000+ they sold tickets to. Yet they continued selling tickets the day of the event. MOST patrons left angry in the middle of the event. It was a complete disaster. - They had one single tent set up which was supposed to supply the "huge menu of Cajun/Creole food". Logistically, this was a ridiculous expectation and completely failed. Within the first 30 minutes of the festival's start, the food line was down the block and took 45 minutes or more to sit through only to be handed a box of disgusting undercooked food that was not safely prepared or held at appropriate temperatures. - This is the menu that was advertised (http://www.bayoufestivaltour.com/#!menu/clxi). They provided less than a quarter of the items listed. They did not have crawfish, corn, red potatoes, catfish, fried shrimp, frogs legs, alligator, oysters, crawfish tails, etouffee, creole, wine, fresh squeezed lemonade, po boy sandwiches, fried green tomatoes, fried chicken, BBQ, ice cream, or beignets. The food was an absolute abomination. No safe food practices were upheld. I contacted the health department and they said unfortunately, they couldn't enforce health codes because this was a non-profit organization. That's absolutely ridiculous. Several people got sick and wrote about it on the Festival's Facebook page which the organizers quickly deleted. They were pulling their food stock from an unrefrigerated U-Haul truck. The "all you can eat" concept was nullified by the wait times and the fact that they ran out of most items almost immediately. Most of the menu simply was not available. - Complete disorganization and chaos. Most staffers were volunteers and were completely clueless. We got 4 different answers from 4 different staff members on where to check in when we arrived. We knew that was a bad sign. It just snowballed from there.- They advertised "unlimited beer and bourbon" from "a wide variety of local/national beers/bourbons". They had 2 beer brands (Abita and one other non-local selection) and 2 bottom shelf bourbons (Evan Williams and Dicky's which sold out in 2 hours). And the lines to obtain beer or bourbon were also 45 minutes or more which completely nullified the concept of "all you can drink".- More excerpts from the website which were not provided or not as advertised (http://www.bayoufestivaltour.com/#!about-us/c1sdk): arts and craft vendors (there were 2), merchandise vendors (there were none), 2nd line parade (didn't exist), live bands (there were 2), cooking demonstrations (didn't exist), hot pepper eating contest (didn't exist), plenty of beer from local and national breweries (2 non-local breweries) and Bourbon (2 bottom shelf offerings), "The Bayou Festival Tour will feature a wide variety of musical genres including New Orleans roots in Blues, Jazz, Funk, Zydeco, Cajun, Brass, Country, Alternative, and Rock" (there were 2 bands; one Brass and one classic rock cover band), New Orleans style alcoholic beverages (didn't exist)...- Up until last night, you could go onto their Facebook page and read countless complaints. Their Wall/Timeline was completely covered with people complaining and not a single word of praise. It was a complete fiasco. These people are operating a scam under the guise of being a non-profit organization providing "a Cajun Experience". Yet evidence of their non-profit/charitable work is nowhere to be found. They pocketed a massive amount of money without providing the services that were promised or even coming close to what was advertised. LivingSocial also sold tickets to the event and are currently being bombarded with complaints. It would be one thing if these people were just amateurs who hit a few speed bumps and held a less-than-perfect festival. But these people collected well over $100k in ticket sales BEFORE the festival took place and did nothing to prepare for the volume of attendees. They were barely prepared to handle 500 people yet did not feel the ethical responsibility to stop selling tickets/refund tickets when they knew they were in over their heads. The organizer's name is Shelton Roseboro of Stonewall Productions. Contact him at [email protected] and let him know how you feel.

As the festival I attended in Durham on April 20, 2013, was run by the same outfit, I feel I should speak here as well to reinforce what others have said.The Durham Bayou "Festival" was the most poorly organized, disappointing event I have ever had the misfortune of attending.Many people had posted on the Tour's Facebook page, but the organization removed them all and changed the settings so that no one may post on their page. They do not seem to have addressed anyone's concerns or complaints. I feel their attempt to silence the people rightly angered compels me to speak out all the more.Please see https://www.facebook.com/BayouFestivalSupportGroup for more information or to chime in.

DO NOT ATTEND! THIS EVENT WAS A HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE! My boyfriend and I drove two hours for nothing but frustration and wanting to strangle the IDIOT who came up with this function. There was no order nor any type of plan to handle all the people signed up for this chaotic event! The line for the beer was ridiculous. When we got there at 3pm they kindly told us they were out of food! Mind you this is an all you can eat event! After about an hour of chaos and nothing to eat nor drink, we decided to leave FRUSTRATED and DISAPPOINTED! If anyone is even considering to go to this event, save your money and have your own Cajun party at home, where you can have all the beer, bourbon and food that won't get you sick!Shell

This event was a complete waste of money! We purchased tickets online to realize we had to wait in the ticket line anyway. They said it would start at 12:00, but the food wasn't ready until 2:00pm. We stood in the hot sun for two hours waiting on one piece of fish and 1 cluster of crab legs. I could have had better at Long John Silvers. Don't go next year, because this was the most unorganized event I have ever seen!!!!

The 1st Annual Charlotte Bayou Festival took place June 23, 2012, but I've just now been able to give a thorough review of this train wreck. I wish I could give this event zero stars. It is the worst-organized event I have ever attended, hands down! Ticket holders waited in the food line for a minimum of 1 hour 15 minutes in the blazing hot sun after having waited in the ticket line just to pick up will call tickets purchased online. There was no dedicated express line for will call as there should have been. The fact it is the first annual one of this event is no excuse for what amounts to downright fraud in the delivery of what ticket holders thought they purchased, especially considering a professional events management company supposedly organized the event according to the event website. Even a new event should not be difficult to pull off given the professional event-organizing expertise such a company should be providing. Given the poor event management, it is only natural to wonder how much money actually went to the charity the event was supposed to support. The servers were all volunteers who reminded ticket holders constantly that they were just volunteers. They understandably didn't want to hear complaints about the event when the real organizers weren't even present to receive complaints. If you wanted a soda, you had to get back into the main ticket line to buy tickets for them. You couldn't pay cash at the point of purchase. This system wasn't made clear when picking up your wrist band for the food part of the event. Yet another bad planning issue. Outside of the food, there wasn't much Cajun about this festival. A few high quality craft vendors were sprinkled in with a bunch of low quality ones. The event was advertised as all you can eat with live entertainment. The live entertainment was located at the other end of the event outside of the paid ticket area, away from where everyone was standing in line and eating once they finally got though the line in an area that was free for anyone to visit. I know I didn't get to hear the live music, much less be in a position to say whether I even liked it or not. The food was not all you can eat considering about half the menu items listed as being part of the all you can eat meal weren't even available and the excessive wait time. There was only ONE food line for ALL the food that was available, but the line was totally stopped at times when the food completely ran out. Why wasn't it set up in stations like is the norm at a food festival and with an adequate if not excessive supply of food given its all you can eat nature? Gumbo at one station, corn and potatoes at another, fried fish at another, etc. That way, people are split in multiple lines and can at least be eating one item while waiting in line for another item if they so choose. There was a second line, though. Once you were served the first time, you were allowed to wait in a MUCH shorter line for seconds and be served again even before everyone in the prImary line was served firsts but only if you didn't throw away your takeout container. Your dirty container would then be refilled. I thought that was against health regulations due to contamination of serving utensils touching dirty "plates" (here, plates were the plastic takeout containers). Online ticket ordering was misleading, too. The official website said online tickets were sold out, but I found them and bought them on the third party website responsible for selling the online tickets. Could saying advance tickets were sold out on the official event website be a ploy to make the event look even more appealing to people undecided about attending by making the event look more popular than perhaps it would really have been otherwise thus spurring ticket sales? Given how the actual event was run, this idea isn't out of the realm of possibility. The food itself was ok in quality but not worth the advance price of almost $30 paid per ticket. I heard some people in line left this event to eat at Cajun Queen just a few blocks away for less money, better quality food, far less wait time, and most definitely far less frustration!In the end, the consolation prize was being able to get a refund for the ticket price by disputing the credit card ticket charge on the grounds the event didn't deliver what was promised (fraud) once I found out some people who had paid cash at the gate were given a cash refund at the gate when they complained about the event.

Oversold. Poorly organized and executed. Overpriced food, under-filled "sample" cups, long sloooooow moving lines, and lots of angry patrons. In short, it was a rip-off. Just "buy you" the same items at the store for less money, and do it yourself for a much, much better time.