Chandler Ostrich Festival

Re-living the Chandler Ostrich Festival of 2006. OUR WORST EVENT EVER.

It's that time of year again when we (vendors, etc.) are all working on our schedules for next year and begin sending in our booth fees and applications, etc. I could never forget the last time we did the Chandler Ostrich Festival. There are a good number of us (vendors) that will never do this event again.....especially if you have to travel a great distance for it.

One of our worst, most disastrous weekends ever. We went a long ways for this one and this turned out to be one of the most stressful weekends we ever had to endure. 145 days of drought in the Phoenix area ended with 1 1/2 days of torrential downpours that turned the vendor area into a foot-deep lake and the parking lot into a mud bog where it was virtually impossible for vendors to get their vehicles out until the mud dried. It started raining on Friday evening. Throughout the night, we listened to the rain coming down on top of our motor home. Periodically, the rain would slow down, but would come down hard shortly after. Earlier on Friday, there were reports of possible rain. As I walked around the vendor area, located in a gully, I realized that if we were to get a large amount of rain, the area is going to flood. The ground was hard and it would take a long time for the water to seep through. Fortunately, when we closed up Friday evening, we removed most of our things from the ground.Upon awakening Saturday morning, it was still raining and we pretty much knew that the day was going to be a 'washout'. All day long the rains kept coming and coming.

As we sat in the motor home in the parking lot we saw it turning to mud, as some vehicles passed by. We began to wonder if we would be able to get our vehicle out of the parking lot as we saw many vehicles actually get stuck in the mud; tow trucks couldn't even get them out. Night-time came and it was still raining. It kept up until early Sunday morning. We finally went to our booth around 8:00AM and found the top sagging with water and a huge lake surrounding the booths located in the gully, What a bonehead idea to put vendors down in here.

We waited for several hours before they began pumping out the water. The rains ended around 5:00AM and they did not even begin pumping the water until after 11:00AM. The promoters claimed that since it was Sunday, they could not contact the workers. You know, you see the area turning into a lake on Saturday, but you don't think about making arrangements to pump the water out. I mean, like...uhhh... the water is just going to dissapear. Many people told me that the ground would just absorb the water and it would dissapear. People, the ground was rock solid and very little of it will seep inside. Am I missing something here?

They proceded to pump out the water. As the time approached 2:00PM, the water was just about gone and we were able to open up. We still had major problems with the parking lot because we weren't sure if we'd be able to get out of there. However, just after it became dark, I figured that the mud had dried enough to enable me to escape. Do you like nightmares? This was one hell of a nightmare and everything bad that could possibly happen, did occur.

You can read my complete story, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN or NO SYMPATHY FROM THE DEVIL ....a true account of the Chandler Ostrich Festival and Brown Amusements on our website:

http://www.dandlcreations.com/chandler.htm