Washington, D.C.
We couldn’t have asked for better weather at this weekend’s Vintage Virginia Wine Festival. And between the 85 degree temperature, live music, free food samples and mediocre (yet copious) amount of vino, Saturday was pretty great.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Party DC, the event planning company that organized our bus transportation to and from Bull Run. If you’re a young professional here in the nation’s capital, chances are good that you’ve been on one of Party DC’s trips – or at least heard of them.
I’ve been on several, to fall and spring Gold Cup and the Wine Festival (twice). But to be honest, I’ve never been happy (or even remotely satisfied) with Party DC’s level of service or professionalism – in fact, no one I’ve spoken to has.
Here are Five Reasons That Party DC is Awful:
- Terrible website. It’s slow, crashes browsers and is impossible to navigate. Worst of all, it makes purchasing tickets a pain. Forget about trying to find or view event photos.
- Scaled pricing. Yeah, it’s common with other event tickets, but Party DC doesn’t tell you the exact dates of when prices will increase – or what they will increase to. What ensues? An unnecessary guessing game intended solely to pad their bottom line.
- Oversold trips. A completely unacceptable practice. At spring Gold Cup this year, many full-paying customers were forced to stand on the hour trip out to the Plains, Virginia.
- No pre-trip orientation or organization. Time and time again (this past weekend being a prime example), Party DC employees have offered no direction to the hundreds of customers arriving at the Front Page. This inevitably results in a huge backlog and massive confusion when attempting to load buses. And Party DC buses leaving on time? Laughable.
- Drunk chaperones. Party DC “hires” people to staff buses, but these same people are allowed to drink and do what they want at the event. You can imagine what kind of leadership and organization this inspires — especially at the end of the day.
It’s no surprise then: Party DC events are consistently a screwy mess. So, from this point on, I’ll be boycotting their equally screwy trips.
Who’s with me?
June 5, 2007 at 7:40 am
yeah. I agree. total crap.
June 5, 2007 at 10:27 am
I’ve never participated in a boycott before, but this one is as good as any.
June 5, 2007 at 10:58 am
I was one of the unfortunate MANY to have man-junk in my face the entire way to Spring Gold Cup because of standing passengers on the bus. It was probably the same for the ride home, but I either don’t recall or don’t care. An hour of someone’s package in my grill is unacceptable, but I only boycott French Products. Is Party DC French?
June 5, 2007 at 5:01 pm
AND, to make matters worse, the food at their events is terrible. I don’t do pasta salad from Giant.
August 23, 2007 at 6:28 am
Never did the bus thing since it isn’t convenient to where I live, although many of my friends have, but I did pay for the tent/food at the spring Gold Cup. The food was nothing,just something to keep from being hungry so you can drink, felt I paid mainly to get in to the tent to meet my friends. View was better elsewhere and I will stick to racing my dogs there since I was allowed complimentary entrance into the VIP/exhibitor/owners tent, met cute parachute guys and interesting horse trainers & where the food was fantastic and liquor top shelf!