This was an alright event. It worked out way better if you were VIP. For that status it had some perks to it and it allowed you to arrive 1 hour before the General admission. So VIP arrived by 11am. There was a line but it moved pretty fast. Part of the VIP status for twenty dollars more included A beer bacon glass. A lanyard. The lanyard was pretty cool. We also got to go to Roy Rogers stand and they were giving away bacon cheeseburgers and chicken sandwiches to the VIP only. We opted for the Bacon cheeseburger. It was good l might add. They had a line inside for the variety of bacon. You know it's true about the early bird catches the worm. In this case it was the Bacon. They had a variety of selections and l know l went back at least four times. I tried the jalapeno Bacon and the old Bay bacon. Regular bacon. The peppered bacon, pork belly, & bacon jam. They also had a nice selections of beer. I was so excited to have the Two things that l enjoy together. I thought the General admission cup they gave you was a joke. It's no way l would do this at GA price. Just add twenty dollars more and you will be much happier. Do we plan on returning next year. Oh most definitely but as VIP only. read more

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It's time for another episode of... Pros and Cons! Pro: Great potential. People who love beer, bacon, and music should be able to find something they like at this event and enjoy their passions. The website is clean and informative, and the festival includes alot of great ideas. An all-you-can-eat bacon bar? Over 100 beers to try? Bands spanning multiple music genres playing every hour of the day? Sounds awesome Con: In order to enjoy these things, you had to enter the fairgrounds through one of three entrances, where festival-goers had to show IDs and receive bracelets, a map, and a tasting glass. Sounds simple, but the event coordinators failed to account for the fact that everyone would show up around noon to get in. Well, if you showed up late, you had to wait an hour in a line around the block. We arrived around 12:30 and didn't enter until 1:43. And at a festival that is only 6 hours long, that is approximately 1/6th of the 1-day pass wasted. There are multiple ways to avoid this (staggered entrance, better venue, open gates earlier, more staff, more entrances), but no one thought of this and people were VERY upset. Pro: Once we were in, the BEER was flowing. Many choice local, regional, and national beers. You would wait in line for a brewery for maybe 2-3 minutes, and then get to the front and choose which variety you wanted, tossing a coin into a bucket for donation to a charity. You would get maybe 3-4oz of beer in your tasting glass (larger glass for VIPs) and then wait in another line while you sampled one variety. Many breweries handed out coasters, and it was a festive, fun time. Con: The BACON bar was very poorly planned. What was advertised? An all-you-can-eat bacon bar with 2 tons of different varieties of bacon to satisfy bacon lovers. Now, a pound of bacon is about 15 pieces of thin-cut bacon, so assuming 1-ton per day, that is 30,000 pieces of bacon for the day. The problem? They couldn't cook it fast enough. There was a 15-minute wait in a long line to get to the bacon bar, and when you got there, there were 4 empty buffet trays and one tray of applewood-smoked bacon being shoveled carelessly into paper trays, along with some pork rinds and a sauce bar. I got 3 pieces of 1 variety of bacon and two pork rinds. There was your 'all-you-can-eat' bacon bar. Pro: The MUSIC portion was decent. After missing the first two bands waiting in line outside the festival, we did enjoy the Rockaway Beach Boys (a Ramones cover band) and local garage-folk band Skribe. I can't speak to the Sunday bands, but we liked both the bands we heard. I even looked up Skribe on ReverbNation later. Cons: A few other bummers. The cigar patio ran out of cigars when we were 10 places back in line, but we didn't even know that was an option until we saw the map. The bacon a la carte options for sale (candies, jams, desserts, and entrees) were lacking, a very poor overall selection, though we did enjoy our chili dog from Volt. The ticket price did NOT cover parking, and the beer tents were so packed together it was difficult to navigate the grounds; they could have spread the tents out. Overall, I don't think I would come back. Great vision, but they need to hire someone who has run an event before to think of problems before they happen. Better venue, more execution for the bacon bar, better system for screening IDs, and a better experience for the $45 price. read more

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After a lot of headache, I got a 50% refund, which I'm okay with. What I never got: an apology for the behavior of the organizers friends and family on the Beer Bacon Music Facebook page. What makes this review remain 1 star: The organizers somehow tracked down my HOME ADDRESS and sent me a letter asking me to remove my review since they refunded me. Thats not how it works, dude. read more

This was a good festival, this would have been my third year if they didn't change the location. The new location of the festival is in the middle of no where. I would usually come from out of town and rent an Airbnb over night. The fair grounds was the perfect location for this event and now they are having it in some random family recreation park. The park has go carts, mini golf but you pay extra for all that stuff. I won't be attending this even anymore until they bring it back to Frederick fair grounds!! read more

Complete disaster, borderline scam. Do not trust these people. No communication. No apologies. No refunds. Tickets for 2015 cost more than they did for 2014... with absolutely zero guarantee that they won't bomb again this year. Save your money for the Maryland Craft Beer Festival, which is legitimate. read more

There were over 100 different beer tons of bacon fantastic live music the lines weren't long at all and it was a beautiful sunny day looking forward to coming back for beer bacon music take to May 16th read more

Weak selection of beer this year, not as many choices. The layout was not well planned out as it was last year. Choices of bacon were extremely limited as we had around 5 last year. Probably won't come back. read more

I was one of the thousands who wisely (or not?) purchased tickets to the festival online for the Saturday event in Frederick, MD. Presumably a convenience to me, and for the festival so they had an idea of how many people to expect. I waited in line OVER AN HOUR to get in, yet my neighbors, who arrived 30 minutes AFTER I did and did NOT purchase advance tickets were able to get right in. The security guards did nothing to help control the crowd of folks waiting to get in, and people started to cut in line, which was making folks angry and could have had negative consequences. By the time we were able to get into the very long line for the "over 2000 lbs of bacon, and you can go back for more " (as advertised on the website; I was able to get 3 pieces. Almost all of the serving trays were empty except for two flavors. I even heard from one woman who waited in line and when she got to the tables with bacon, there was NONE there. No one even had the decency to tell her and the others. read more