Tickets are SOLD OUT! 3rd Annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival
February 4th, 2010 (Des Moines, IA) – Tickets for this year’s Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival are on sale NOW exclusively through www.blueribbonbaconfestival.com beginning at high noon on Thursday, February 4th. Tickets are $35 for entry into the main event on Saturday the 27th and a $100 ticket gets you entry to Saturday as well as the private dinner at Cafe di Scala on the evening of the 24th. We hope you can make it!
The event will be held at the Scottish Rite Consistory at 519 Park Street in downtown Des Moines on Saturday, February 27th.
Schedule of Events*
- 10:00 am – Doors Open, Blazing Bacon Bloodies are Served, 1st Course is Served, Sign In for Bacon Eating Contest Begins (Sign In Closes at 2:30 pm), DJ Patrick Porto Sets the Mood
- 10:45 am – Opening Ceremony, National Anthem by Special Guest, Bacon Invocation by the Godfather, Opening Remarks and 1st Official “OHHH, Bacon!” Cheer
- 11:00 am – Bacon Showcase Opens and Parade of Pre-Cooked Bacon Explosions
- 11:15 am – Live Music Begins by the Saylor Hill Sliders, Lecture Hall Opens with First Seminar Entitled “A Driving Tour of Iowa Bacon” by Leo Landis, The Bacon Professor (This Lecture Will Be Repeated at 1:15 pm)
- 11:45 am – Second Seminar entitled, “Why Everything is So Much Better with Bacon” by Jonathan A. Campbell, MS with the Iowa State Meat Laboratory (This Lecture Will Be Repeated at 1:45 pm)
- 12:00 pm – 2nd Course is Served
- 12:30 pm – Third Seminar entitled, “Templeton Rye Whiskey – An Iowa Classic” by Scott Bush, President of Templeton Rye
- 1:00 pm – Parade of Bacon Explosions by the BBQ Addicts, creators of the Bacon Explosion
- 2:00 pm – Bacon Popper Pizza served by Fong’s Pizza
- 2:30 pm – Bacon Desserts are Served
- 3:00 pm – Bacon Showcase Closes
- 3:15 pm – Bacon Eating Contest Begins
- 3:45 pm – Bacon Festival Closing Ceremony (Best Bacon T-Shirt Award Winner, Last “OHHH, Bacon” Cheer, Bacon Eating Champion Speaks)
- 4:00 pm – The After-Party Begins at High Life Lounge and El Bait Shop
* Times are subject to change
Facts:
What – Third Annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival!
When – Saturday, February 27th, 10am – 4pm
Where – Scottish Rite Consistory, 519 Park Street, Des Moines, IA
Ticket Availability – Available for purchase through an online link located at www.blueribbonbaconfestival.com at high noon on Thursday, February 4th
Cost – $35 per ticket which includes a commemorative t-shirt, koozie, a menu of 7 bacon items, unlimited bacon samples at the Bacon Showcase, live music, a seat in two bacon educational lectures and your first drink free
Consumption – 583 lbs of bacon was consumed at the 2nd Annual Bacon Festival in 2009, the Iowa Bacon Board has already secured over 1,050 lbs of bacon for this year’s event
Competition – Personal Trainer, Manni Balignasay is the back-to-back Blue Ribbon Bacon Eating Champion in 2008 & 2009
Bacon Showcase – In 2010 the following bacon brands will be showcased: Eden Farms, Farmland, Hormel, Iowa Farm Families, Niman Ranch and Vande Rose Farms
Iowa Bacon Board – Members include Suzanne Reynolds Arnold, Seth Hall, Mark Pederson, Caressa McCurnin, Logan Porter, Marshall Porter, Tom Porter, Brad Proctor, David Proctor, Brooks Reynolds, John Tiffany and Kevin Tiffany
Honorary Cardiologist – Jeffrey Olson, M.D. – Dr. Olson will be present, handing out business cards and discussing the benefits of a balanced bacon diet
Sponsors – Coors Original Banquet Beer, IP Pathways, Pearl Vodka, Reynolds & Reynolds, Iowa Pork Producers, Smarty Pig, Stivers Ford Lincoln Mercury, Scottish Rite Consistory, Vande Rose Farms, Niman Ranch, Fidelity Bank, Fong’s Pizza, Mr. Baconpants.com and Goin’ Postal
Tickets for the fest are already sold out! I had to take a call at work and tried at 12:03 and there were no more available. I am more disappointed than words could say. This is the third year I have tried to get tickets with no luck.
Are they sold out? Arena ticket office says none are available?
What’s the over-under on when this thing sells out? I already can’t get tickets on the website.
Is anyone else having trouble ordering on the Web site? I have been getting a message that tickets are unavailable since 12:01 p.m.
Tickets sold out in 25 mins. As a sponsor of the event I wish everyone could go but space will not allow that. I know the guys behind the event are going to have a meeting about what they should do. I do know one thing, next year it will be at an even bigger venue.
I have been to the 1st and 2nd baconfests. Too bad the promoters dont take care of returning customers. Other events allow returning customers first right or refusal. Looks like they are sold out.
I logged in 5 mins before the time to get tickets on the iowa events website, the website was spinning accessing tickets for over an hour.
Tickets sold out in 25 minutes? How come the website shut me out at 12:02? Very disappointing.
For all you naysayers who didn’t get tickets and are now complaining, shame on you. There are 600 people who got tickets that obviously love bacon more than you! Be on time next year.
I am glad to see that there are others that are just as disappointed as I am. I, too, tried to get tickets to BF1 and BF2 with no luck and now I can add another year with no tickets. Why do we even live here when the only thing that is fun is a Bacon Fest and we can’t even get tickets to it. Did the first person buy 1000 tickets? How can something like this sell out so quickly? Are their volunteer opportunities?
I keep getting the same error as you guys. Their website must still be broken. This sucks!
Even though I couldn’t get tickets I really hope they don’t ruin this thing by trying to move it to a bigger place. The small venue makes it that much more special, and is why the demand is so high. Selling more tickets and cramming more people in there is only going to backfire so that everyone has a bad time.
Hopefully I can find some on craigslist!
Thats a good point. Did anyone go to the new years bash put on by the des moines social club? They sold 900 tickets for a place that only holds 400. It sucked, you couldn’t even move, and now a lot of people are never going to go to a future event there.
it is sad, I got a late start, but got in and then the website crashed! got the tickies though
all hail the pig and don’t be haters on the limitations…it doubled in size this year…I’m guessing that was no small feat in itself…lets all drink a PBR to Brooks!
I think they should have taken care of the veteran bacon festival attendees first and then released the tickets to new attendees!!! Might of just lost my respect and desire to attend next year! Looks like a bunch of us are going to get together and throw our own Bacon Festival!!!
ed, I think you mean “you’re” instead of “your”.
Ed: Sack up and grow a pair. People that reserved – and paid for! – the tickets right away are the ones that are going. It’s first come, first serve – I challenge you to find an event that sells any differently. If you really did like bacon more than everyone else, you would have been first in line. You weren’t.
Jensens: Are you serious? You lost respect for BRBF just because other people got tickets before you? I can understand losing respect for Kanye for what he did to Taylor at the VMA’s, but this wasn’t some malevolent act by the Bacon Folks. They have to assume that the people most eager to go are the ones that got in line first. I can’t think of any other way to do it.
Randy: The organizers had to go online to order extra tickets just like you. They reserved very few (four or less each total), so there wasn’t any bacon nepotism involved.
Regarding website problems, I had them, too. It took me three tries, but I finally got them ordered. Blame the malfunctions on Wells Fargo (as if the mortgage crisis and eye-gouging fees weren’t enough to rile you). From what I heard, NEVER before had there been so many people logging on at the same time to order tickets for an event. And we’re talking Miley Cyrus, people.
Point being, don’t use your bitterness to crap all over an amazing event. These guys are trying to do right as much as possible. Almost all the hype is organically grown – aside from press releases, it’s been bacon word-of-mouth that has made this thing such a hit. They’re trying to grow it each year at a measured pace so that they can keep these problems to a minimum instead of going from 350 to 10,000 and ruining the allure and magic of ingesting 10,000 calories in six hours.
If you want to take out your frustrations somehow, move your money to a community bank. That’ll show ‘em.
(Who am I? A bacon lover. Not an organizer, not a plant. My “inside info” came secondhand from a colleague of a board member. I have nothing to gain from my post. I’m here to protect Bacon’s first amendment right to assemble.)