The 2010 Swiss Wine Festival committee is still wrapping up its accounts and tallying its figures, but this year’s four-day event figures to once again break attendance records, as sunny summer weather brought out huge crowds to all of the events.
“I think overall everything was really positive,” Festival President Kirk Works said. “We don’t have our numbers compiled yet. We’ve been trying to pay bills and get other things done, so we haven’t had time to count the tickets, but we hope to get that done by this weekend; but overall I think the crowd was well behaved and no real issues. I think everyone had a good time.”
Kirk Works said that festival officials got a lot of positive feedback from attendees and also from vendors.
Although official numbers aren’t in yet, anyone who was around the festival on Saturday night can’t help but feel that the crowd was a record, and festival officials tend to agree.
“I think it was,” Kirk Works said. “We ran out of parking, and we’ve never run out of parking before. It was a big crowd.”
Kirk Works also said that the “Galaxy Girl Thrill Spectacular” and the “Kachunga and the Alligator” shows also drew high praise from attendees, as well as other events.
“Galaxy Girl and the alligators were a big success, like the tigers were last year,” he said. “It seemed to be that everyone was really pleased with that and enjoyed it. It makes you feel good when you spend a lot of money on something and it pays off, because people enjoy it.”
The Wine Pavilion was also a big success this year, with huge crowds packing in to sample wines from 11 Indiana wineries. The Ridge Winery from here in Switzerland County also had a successful weekend, as the wineries’ “Black Jack” wine was judged as the “Best of Show” among all wines sampled, and it also earned first place in its division.
“I think there’s no question that the wine pavilion was up in attendance,” Kirk Works said.
Kirk Works said that the committee this year made the food court area wider, which allowed easier movement for attendees, but left the festival president with the feeling that things weren’t as crowded as they have been in the past.
“The food vendors did well, and we had a record number of arts and crafts vendors, I don’t think we’ve ever had that many booths before. Overall, I think we have to be very pleased with how things went. We can’t complain about it.”
Kirk Works said that with the current economy, most festivals are just trying to maintain where they have been at in previous years, and he felt that the Swiss Wine Festival did that and more.
“Overall we feel like we had a really great festival,” Kirk Works said. “We hope everyone enjoyed it and had a good time.”