Business ProfileforWachusett Mountain Associates, Inc.

We went to one of the fall festivals earlier this month. It took over an hour to get to the lots, they had no staff or police directing traffic down the street. We realized they had packed thousands of people into the event and it was a miserable experience. We had driven over an hour to get there and it was a beautiful day so we felt like we wasted our afternoon. A staff member inside the event said they had sold 4k+ pre-sale and still sold tickets that day and they were completely overwhelmed.Towards the end of the event, I tried to reasonably express our disappointment with the ticket office on the over-crowding and asked if we could come back the following weekend (since they were hosting the same event 2 weeks in a row) without paying the entry fee again. Not only did the girl at the desk yell at me for even insinuating that this would constitute giving me a refund, she got her manager who doubled down and called the staff "a bunch of liars who should've kept their mouths shut" when I mentioned the staff actually working inside the event felt it was packed. I tried to say we were willing to come back and spend our $ inside to which she said absolutely not and demanded we go back inside and "enjoy the last 40 minutes of the event", even though she was on her way to go home early too.. which we didn't want to even try so we could to avoid the likely traffic jam once the event officially ended. We decided that even though we loved coming here in the past, there was no way after that interaction with multiple employees (of apparently high rank) we'd be back. Can't imagine how the staffs treated if they get called liars to patrons either.The mountain clearly had others that were as frustrated as us, since they had posted on their social media a few days later that they in fact WOULD offer refunds or free entry to people who felt they didn't get to enjoy it either. I reached out and did receive a refund and am glad they seem to actually value customers opinions.

Hello *******, We are very sorry you did not have a good experience at Applefest. With peak foliage & beautiful weather we were simply overwhelmed with demand for this event. We have hosted this event for over 30 years now, and we have never seen anything close to this level of interest. We tried our best to mitigate crowding by cutting off ticket sales, but with hikers/leaf peepers trying to access other parts of the mountain, the traffic kept coming. As you mentioned we did offer refunds to people who were not able to use their tickets, and we are very sorry if our staff failed to make that happen for you on the day. We are reevaluating how this event will run next year, most likely requiring all tickets to be purchased online and setting a hard limit. Thank you for your feedback on the event, if you would still like a refund we are happy to process, just email us at ******************************* with your order number. All the best. -The Wachusett Team