Went to the big annual shindig at the Denver Zoo last night — our biggest crew yet (and to a sell-out crowd). Margie and I, Stan, Doyce & Kate, and Jackie. Lots of good beer, lots of good food, lots of good company — and enjoyed Angie Stevens live on stage, too. The weather was cool, but the rain I’d worried about earlier in the day never showed up, huzzah.
The event was bigger than in past years, too, and it had the feel of being run by someone different. Some comments, good and bad.
Good:
- They were spread out over a greater space. Like Do at the Zoo, it wasn’t all focused on the party shelters, but spread from the shelters down to the carousel/train area. That avoided the hellish crunch for the breweries beneath the shelter from past years, and made for a bit more wandering fun.
- More food places. There were a number of familiar faces from Do at the Zoo. The food, as always, was very tasty, and I took note of a few places I hadn’t thought of for a while.
- There were some hard liquor stations at the main shelter — mostly advertising vodka, but with rum and gin and other items. That made for a nice (though not critical) change of pace, esp. later in the evening.
Not-So-Good:
- No shirts or logo swag. Not a huge loss, since the logo itself this year wasn’t all that spiffy, but in the past it’s been kind of a nice feature.
- Extra pay-for-food stations. They didn’t seem to be getting a lot of traffic, since the rest of the food was free — albeit behind ginormous lines. I honestly felt it was taking up space that could have been better used.
- Ginormous lines for some of the food (albeit worth it, such as for the Golden Toad booth). And not always very well defined lines. Doing a bit more to (a) break up the food places (esp. the popular ones) and (b) define some clearer queues would help, and be quite doable.
- Though spread out more, some of the food stations were in some known choke points, which led to still worse choking (line-wise, not food-wise). I hope someone was taking notes. (One idea would, rather than a booth of four or eight being just food, or just beer, mixing it up a bit.)
- No desserts! Past shindigs have had some handy free dessert stations to fill the stomach later in the evening when you didn’t feel like another slider or something-on-a-stick. That was missing now, in favor of the liquor stations. Net-net, I’d rather have had some lemon squares.
- Brewery tastes change. This year, everyone had an IPA, and most had a red. Very few places had a Wheat or Hef. That made it a less ecstatically enjoyable beerwise for me … but it didn’t cut down my imbibery that much.
Still, those are mostly refinements. Overall, it was a fine time, glad we went … look forward to going next year …
(And many thanks to Jackie for being the Designated Driver. You rock, Jacks!)
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