Though I can't speak on behalf of last year's festival organizers, I can speak on behalf of festival organizers in general since I've actually helped organize festivals. As someone who has actually done that kind of work on a large scale, it sounds to me as though the organizers of last year's balloon festival didn't expect such a turnout. I've had this exact same problem when I was with a group who organized the first-ever food truck festival in a particular area. The principal organizer took care of social media advertising, there was no other paid advertising at all.
Based on facebook "likes" and "goings," we were expecting a total of around 3000 people spread over a 2-day event. The park could handle around 1000 at any given moment, so a trickle of people totalling 1500 from 11AM til 8PM one day and noon-6 the next seemed like a reasonable expectation. Most people who attend food truck festivals don't show up at the beginning and stay til close. they come when they come, stay a couple of hours, and leave.
We had no idea that almost 4000 people would all try and show up within the first three hours of the first day. The highway had to be closed for one exit, the traffic jam backed it up three exits in either direction. The road to the venue was completely stopped for over a mile, the police had to be called in to divert traffic. Both the front and back parking lot were full by the second hour, and we hadn't thought to rent out the soccer field for parking, as sometimes this venue used to when it has its annual agricultural fair.
We had full use of the outdoor facility's restrooms, but they ran out of toilet paper. People were told not to bring pets (service animals were of course allowed), but they brought them anyway, and so it was a tangled mess of leashes. The lines were so long that people were waiting over an hour for their chosen truck's food. And by the time they got to the front of the line, they found out the truck had run out of what they wanted. Even the trucks didn't expect this kind of business.
A couple of people passed out from dehydration, since there was only one water vendor, it was a warm day in full sun, and of course the water vendor ran out as well.
They had to close early, due to lack of food, lack of toilet paper, and utter chaos on the roads and parking lot. The fines for "inadequate" parking attendants and police overtime were in the multi-thousands.
While my situation was a horrific nightmare on every possible level, it was also -obviously- from a marketing perspective a raging success. The fact that most of the trucks were completely sold out, means they raked in thousands of dollars and didn't have to throw a single thing away at the end of the weekend.
Last year's festival sounds like a similar situation, on a less dramatic scale. They suffered from an inability to accommodate masses greater than they had been expecting. They probably planned VERY well...for a much smaller crowd. If they had planned for much larger, and a much smaller one showed up, they would've taken enormous losses financially. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, but that sounds pretty much like the situation.
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