Houston Crawfish Festival

Merriam-​Webster defines a festival as «an often periodic celebration or program of events or entertainment having a specified focus.»
This was not that. Last year a few of my friends bought the Living Social deal and brought ourselves on over to listen to music, perhaps dance, and of course eat unlimited pounds of crawfish.
We arrived to find a line all the way around the block of disgrunled, hungry, far-​from-​celebretory folks. And for good reason. Apparently, you could only get 1 pound of crawfish out at a time after waiting in the outrageous hour (s) long line. I wouldn’t know, because we left and took ourselves to Front Porch to eat crawfish there.
In the event they host this «festival» again this May, don’t say you weren’t warned.

2 hour wait for 1 lb of crawfish (most were tiiiiiinny). It looked like they only had 1 boiler going (I could be wrong)…but for the amount of crawfish and the amount of people that were there, that was a major mistake!
Maybe next time they should charge per round instead of making us all pay $ 20-​$ 25 and getting our hopes up that it would be all you can eat! No one would wait in line for another 2 hours in the Houston heat for only 1 lb of crawfish.
I should have just taken my $ 20 and gone to Bayou City to get more than double the amount, good service, and A/​C!

Do NOT attend this crawfish event on Palmer STreet (or wherever it will be next year). It was a total rip off! Each person gets a standard square white to go box with crawfish. Well, they did NOT fill it up but rather one layer to make it look like it was full. The crawfish were microscopic small! I am not kidding. half an inch at MOST from head to body to tail (excl the head). I have never seen anything so small in my life. Third, you have to line up to get a re-​fill ! The line went all around the parking lot and so it would take about 2 hours or more just to get a re-​fill. Who the heck would stand in line for that? So, no, you reallly don’t get to eat all you want unless you are willing to waste two precious hours of your weekend time. Oh and there was ONE serving station. One person handing out boxes to THOUSANDS of people. Seriously, it was ridiculous. I would not come back if I was PAID to go. Never again. I would rather pay at the SPring Crawfish Festival which I heard had a LOT more crawfish and much bigger! So sad I can’t take back my Saturday.

Absolutely awful & a big mess. The sponsor became greedy & sold too too many tickets. It was not all-​you-​eat because the line was ridiculously long I’m talking about a city block. They only gave you a pound then you would have stand in line again to get another one. The volunteers were just standing around they should have been passing out the food instead of having people in line that long which was at least an hour or more. There were a lot of presale tickets sold so there was no accuse for the cook to start late. I would never come to this event again nor use Exspensive Taste Catering. Very disorganized & I’m very disappointed.

Had to leave after over two hour wait without water (they ran out) in heat. Looks like line had at least another hour. Very poorly planned with only one line, and didn’t have enough crawfish prepared ahead of time. There was event talk they would run out at mid-​day. And even when you got to front they only gave you one pound, which isn’t much for crawfish especially considering it was promoted as an all you can eat excursion and an expensive ($ 20-​$ 25 per person) event on top of that. Plus had to deal with a drunk idiot, who wanted to argue over his right to cut in line. He was alone and just thought that was the right thing to do until he was informed otherwise. Unless I heard they made major changes, I would not return.