[Villages Kahuna]

...required the competitors to be a little, or maybe a whole lot more crowd friendly. In some prior years, if you got there any more than a half hour after the tasting started, almost every booth was out of chili and already packing up to go home. The ticket sellers would gladly take your $5 admission at the boundary fences, but failed to tell you that almost everyone was out of anything to taste. My guess is that this year the contestants were told that they had to prepare a generous amount of chili for tasting by the public. That was a wise move. I'm really glad it went so well this year. That speaks well for future years' events. Next year I'll probably return, with a renewed expectation that I'll actually be able to taste some chili.