Owl-O-Ween

3^rd time was not the charm.
To start we purchased tickets from Groupon. Good price but you could not buy parking pass from them, and you could not just buy a parking pass from KSU. You had to buy your tickets from them to purchased the parking passes.
You could pay $ 10 to park in the park and ride area or in a old Business that is now closed. I was not about to pay KSU to park in public areas. I could see if it was there area or even part of the school but none of it was. We even asked the KSU police where the free parking was and he said there was none. Even the parking lots on campus was $ 10 but they did have the school Shuttle bus bring people back and forth.
Groupon tickets had to be redeemed in a second ticket line. Even if you printed them.
Once inside the walkways were shoulder to shoulder with people mostly drunk college kids.
The areas were were divided into different sections: kids, German Hofbrau, stadium, balloon rides.
Lots of things for the kids to do and not have KSU nickel n dime you to death in this area. A lot of hot air balloons for the kids to trick-​or-​treat around.
The German area was filled with drunk college kids Standing around tables with no chairs so we decided to eat in the stadium area.
This area had more balloons and food trucks and food venders but more was needed for the amount of people that were there. We waited in line for 45 minutes for corndogs.
Last area was the balloon rides for $ 10. The balloons were on the cable and you would go up 20 to 30 feet and then come back down and that was your $ 10 ride.
Each area had some kind of music playing at full volume so it all sounded like one big noise.
First year was the best, it has only gone very much down hill from there. It has turned into a drunk party for KSU.
We will not return again!

Parking was horrendous. I parked in the purple lot a couple of miles from the festival and had to wait 30 minutes for a shuttle. I knew of people who pre-​purchased parking passes and were denied access to their lots.
The lines were unbearable due to the extreme overselling of tickets.
The booths reminded me of a work convention. Boost mobile, Alpharetta dentistry, AT&T, etc. Why would I got to a festival to talk to sales guys and spin a wheel to win a toothbrush?
The 4 food trucks sold out of everything and had 100+ person lines… again ticket overselling.
I ended up leaving after 45 minutes even though it took well over an hour to commute here when you include the insane traffic and shuttle bus.
Can’t say I spoke with anyone who had a differing opinion…

We gave up and went elsewhere. The website contained little information about how the parking worked — especially that you needed a parking pass for most of the lots. The shuttle drop zone was shown on the map but it didn’t say where pickups were or how often they would run. We ended up seeing at least a dozen big busses, but the largest # of folks inside was maybe 6 with hundreds of people walking from all directions.
The lots were labeled by color on the map and designated by flags at the entrance — not the best option when it is dark & very hard to actually see the colors (like purple). One of the lots, close to the field had a flag, so we pulled into it. Saw ~20 spots open but was told we couldn’t park there. Asked if we needed a pass, the guy shrugged. Asked where we were supposed to go. The response was, ask the guy at the entrance — there wasn’t one. Finally found a person in a festival vest, and he not only told us the wrong direction, he named a street that didn’t exist. I heard from a friend that the lines to get in were so long, mislabeled and confusing that they, too, gave up & went elsewhere. If they have it again next year, unless we can actually take a balloon to it, I’m staying away. 90 mins of aimless driving is enough waste for one lifetime.

While I enjoyed the time with my friends, and the German food was great, the traffic, parking and lines to get in were terrible. This is the third year so the organizers should have been much better prepared. There were NO signs to tell drivers where to go to get to the various parking lots — there were policemen on every corner but not helping direct the traffic; once we finally got to the parking lots, there were no spaces left and then once inside, the Groupon lines were horrific. It took 1 ½ hours to get in between traffic, parking and waiting in line. I think it is a great idea and under a different larger venue, I would have enjoyed it much more. Bottom line is that KSU is too small to be able to handle such an event.

Ok my 2 rating is based on a few simple observations. The hot air balloons were very cool and being surrounded by so many was a first for my family. We arrived when gates opened and had prepaid to park and even then had to walk a bit to get in which wasn’t easy for my mother in. We had a Groupon and only waited about 5 minutes to redeem for our tickets because again we arrived right at 6 pm. When we walked in there was no direction, no signs, we found maps and started making our way. There was a huge area with seating and some beer sales, why weren’t the food trucks there? Instead you had to keep going, and enter the field where volunteers were trying to tie up balloons while people tried to walk. It was potentially very dangerous. I actually saw a woman lift her stroller over a wire as 2 volunteers attempted to secure a balloon over the walking path. All of the food tents and trucks were right there. There weren’t that many food options. There were tons of vendor tents for your usual suspects, Avon, Tupperware, scentsy candles, windows and doors etc… the kids went around and trick or treated at the balloons and some tents and we discovered another field with balloons. We determined those were the balloons you could ride in. The line was wrapped around the field. Um no thanks. We left after 2 hours and the traffic was horrible. People couldn’t find parking, the lines of people trying to get in with tickets crossed the street and went into the parking lot. It was nuts.
I think we paid entry fees and service fees for our kids to trick or treat and see a balloon inflate. It was ok but I won’t go again.

It was a really cool event with hot air balloons, so many booths, vendors, activities, etc but there weren’t enough people working so most of the time we just stood in lines. The lines ran to be about 1 hour plus for tickets (and we got there a little after 6). Finding parking was fine but paying and sitting through the traffic took about 40 minutes too. Once we were inside we wanted to take a ride on the tethered hot air balloons which took — no joke — 3 hours for a 5 minute ride on the hot air balloon. On top of that there were several arguments that broke out in the line since people were cutting/​the line was disoriented from both sides since there weren’t enough volunteers to supervise traffic flow. They ran out of food at some point too. I would have rather gone today (Saturday) than Friday since it’s going to be open longer/​none of the Groupon-​ers will be there. It’s a fun event but you’re going to have to be ready for the lines and disorganization.

The only reason I am giving three stars is due to the lack of organization and apparent overselling of tickets. I purchased a voucher for two adults through Groupon.
For Friday evening (¹⁰⁄₂₃), the event started at 6:00P.M., we didn’t arrive to the event till around 7:15P.M., but didn’t even manage to get in till around 9:00P.M. due to the insane traffic, unorganized parking, shuttle buses, and… an additional line to get tickets even though it was already purchased through Groupon. Overall, parking was a mess because people that even prepaid for parking couldn’t redeem their purchase. Flow of traffic was so terrible because everyone was confused about parking that it was a waste of time!
Positive aspects:
1. We did get to ride in a hot air balloon after hours of waiting until the event closed. We didn’t leave until 1:00A.M. (also waiting for a shuttle since it was the LAST shuttle of the night) to take us back to the parking lot.
2. German beer,…yum :)
3. Plenty of food options (though lines were so long we didn’t wait). We wanted the hot air balloon ride more: D
Negative aspects:
If it was better organized (oversell??) that made parking, redeeming tickets easier, it would have been a LOT smoother!
However, if you’ve never been to this event, I do suggest you go! And if you have little ones… please. please…please…watch out for them ;) Heard quite a few announcements for missing kids. Adults… really?!? I’ll get off my soap box now :)
Enjoy the beautiful hot air balloons!

This was literally one of the worst events I’ve ever been to. It was completely unorganized, and every single vendor, booth, and checkpoint seemed entirely overwhelmed by the large number of attendees. We purchased tickets and a parking pass in advance, but that didn’t help at all. We sat in traffic for more than two hours just to get to the Gold lot. This wasn’t traffic getting to the event; this was arriving at the event and THEN sitting for two hours. The «organizers» had roads closed and detours that completely changed routes listed on the website and parking pass, and basically forced people to drive in a huge circle to access the lot. The only positive is that because we purchased our tickets online in advance, we walked right in at checkin and got to bypass the line of hundreds snaking down from the entrance to one of the parking lots. Once inside, it only got worse. People staffing the «help» booths were absolutely unhelpful, and the lines for food were ridiculous. We had our three year old with us and we spent so much time waiting in line for a freaking grilled cheese, that we had just enough time to eat and then head back to the parking lot and head home. While the wait for food sucked, we were very fortunate that we didn’t experience what some people did, which was waiting in line forever and then only to be told that the vendor had RUN OUT OF FOOD. So those poor people had to go into another line to wait AGAIN for 20 – 30 minutes for food.
I don’t know what went wrong tonight, or if this was typical, but it was an absolute disaster. I’m usually a very understanding person when it comes to things like this – stuff happens and you just sort of deal with it. But, this was a disaster by anyone’s standards.
Do yourself a favor and avoid this event. Save yourself the frustration that we experienced tonight. The idea is awesome (hot air balloons, cool booths, good food, and lots of fun costumes), but the execution was piss-​poor. And to the event «coordinators» and «organizers», get your stuff together and plan for the appropriate amount of people.

Cool event… but sell 1000+ groupons and only have 3 ppl working tents for tickets…

Seems like a awesome event but why not have better instructions with driving and directing traffic? We have sat in traffic for one hour and now just driving around looking for our lot that we paid for and cannot find.
Seriously, get it together and I want a refund!