SAN ANTONIO – Many King William Fair attendees say they won’t return to the event in 2024 after a bad experience with the payment process and wristbands.
Tia Miller attended the King William Fair and wished she had known about the system glitches before she decided to take her young kids to the event Saturday. Attendees stood in line for hours trying to figure out the problems with their blast passes.
“The last charge-up that we did took 45 minutes to hit our bracelets. And it was horrendous, especially with very impatient children,” she explained. But even those without children felt their time was too valuable to spend trying to figure out which lines to be in, said Lora Zapata.
“Frustrating time, and then when I saw the post on Facebook, it’s like, ‘Thank God I wasn’t the only one who was getting angry about everything,’” Zapata said.
Miller said she left money on the blast pass at the end because her kids couldn’t handle the long day they’d had already. She said she imagines it was just as frustrating for vendors.
“I just felt really bad for the vendors because we kept seeing it happen,” Miller said. “They kept handing food items over, you know, because their hands are full. And then they were grabbing their little scanner things, and they had no way of taking the food back, and nobody else had any way of paying.”
On Monday afternoon, King WIlliam Fair organizers issued the following explanation about what went wrong:
“The 54th Annual King William Fair welcomed more than 30,000 fairgoers to our historic King William neighborhood. During Friday’s preparations for the Fair, staff, contractors, vendors, and volunteers were concerned how the impending storm on Friday night would affect set up for the Fair. While the storm wasn’t as severe as anticipated, precious time was lost for the set up and the majority had to begin into early Saturday morning. The storm’s effects weren’t immediately known until the Fair was underway. There was extensive damage to power cables going to various booths scattered throughout the Fair Zone, and several booths were without electricity because of the storm. One of the booths affected was the main WiFi hub to provide internet for the Fair Zone and all devices. Once we addressed the power issues, it was then determined that there were internet dead zones throughout the Fair Zone. This lack of WiFi connection delayed the uploading of credits on BlastPass wristbands. If vendors were in a dead zone, their devices would not reflect real-time updates of available credits. To address this issue, in working with Saffire our BlastPass supplier, teams were deployed to assist vendors with their WiFi connection and were instructed to use mobile hot spots as a back-up plan. Saffire set up an additional BlastPass station at the King William Headquarters to assist attendees with their BlastPass credits and resolve issues. At the same time, the WiFi provider used by Saffire and King William began deploying additional equipment to boost WiFi signals to eliminate any dead zones. We are grateful for our volunteers at the BlastPass booths/kiosks and thank them for their patience and willingness to help Fair customers with their credit issues. We love sharing the King William neighborhood with the rest of the city. It’s a magnificent neighborhood full of wonderful people. The King William Fair relies on the support of its thousands of fairgoers to continue our mission to be able to fund arts, education and community improvements right in our neighborhood. We sincerely apologize for the frustration and inconvenience this has caused to our fairgoers affected by this situation. We are grateful to everyone who make it possible to put on a Fair of this magnitude, but it’s the attendees who are integral to our success. We want our fairgoers to have a positive experience and return each year making positive memories. To do this, we are currently making improvements for future Fairs by exploring other food and beverage credit options for King William Fair 2024, and we are working to rectify those accounts who were unable to access funds during the Fair. We ask for patience as we work toward this resolution.”