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Crystal booked a flight to Los Angeles for the Columbus Day Weekend and it had slipped my mind since she had booked the ticket over three months ago. We both book flights throughout the year with our Southwest points since they don’t charge you for changing or canceling flights. This is great because the further in advance you book your tickets, the cheaper it is and if something comes up where you can’t make the trip all you have to do is go online and change or cancel with just one click. There are a lot of advantages when flying with Southwest and you can read all about that HERE, but let’s get back to what we did during the Columbus Day Weekend.

Since the visit was a short weekend getaway, we only had two days to spend in the Pasadena area of Los Angeles and it just happened to be CraftoberFest weekend at the Rose Bowl Stadium. We aren’t huge fans of drinking festivals (and Crystal doesn’t even drink beer), but since we were going with a group of friends we thought it would be a fun time.

Fun photo ops with the Rose Bowl letters

Cute little glasses for your beer tasting

Tickets

We purchased our tickets online and there were two types of tickets: General Admission and VIP. General Admission was $40 and VIP tickets were $60. The only difference was that VIP ticket holders were granted entrance an hour before the rest of the attendees. We really didn’t care to have that extra hour, so we purchased the General Admission ticket.

Upgrade your glass to the classic stein at this tent

The ticket included one 5 oz glass, but if you wanted to upgrade your glass to the classic stein they were being sold for an additional $15. We didn’t mind the petite glass since this gave us a better opportunity to try all the different beers at a faster pace.

Parking

Once we purchased our tickets, we received an email with our ticket, parking instructions, and festival rules. The signs to the parking area for the festival were very easy to follow and we arrived half an hour before opening. We wanted to get there a little early so that we had time to find parking, but to our surprise, there was PLENTY of parking.

The Event

The festival was being held at the famous Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, but instead of it being held inside the stadium it was right next to the stadium in a grassy open area which was the tail-end of the Brookside Golf & Country Club. There were plenty of standing tables where you can enjoy your craft beer, but there was very limited cozy seating.

There really was only a handful of cushioned seating and it’s probably only possible to snag them if you had a VIP ticket. There also wasn’t a ton of trees for shade which was high in demand since it was unusually hot and in the high eighties. With limited seating and shade, the only thing to do was sit in the grass with shade (if you could find one) or stand at one of the tables.

The Craft Beer

You really can’t go wrong with craft beer and there were an array of booths to choose from. The event had breweries from Hofbrau, Unibroue, Glutenberg, Three Weavers and more. You can drink as much as you want for the duration of the event which was from 1:30PM to 5:30PM. Many of the booths started running out of beer around 5PM, so if you have a favorite definitely get another round before they run out. But in general there is plenty of beer and enough to go around.

Enjoying a good time outdoors with friends

Friendly servers at the brewery stations

The Food Stands

There were a handful of food stands with a variety to choose from and we went for the BBQ stand. It’s hard to resist the smell of food grilling so we got the BBQ pulled pork sandwich, a bratwurst and a basket of fries. The sandwiches were pretty good, but the fries were terrible and drenched in oil. We definitely wish we had skipped the fries since we threw most of it away. There was also a food truck on site that seemed very popular and had a constant flow of customers and all their dishes looked tasty. This food truck seemed like the clear winner of the bunch and we slightly regret not ordering there.

CraftoberFest Pasadena Rose Bowl #CraftoberFest #RoseBowl ++ www.thetravelpockets.com

Bathrooms

We were extremely happy that the bathrooms were NOT porta potties. We were a bit worried at first when we pulled into our parking spot and saw that the festival was outside of the Rose Bowl Stadium. We immediately assumed that it was going to be porta potties, but thankfully the venue used the stadium’s bathrooms which were air-conditioned and very clean. We did see a couple of porta potties which were placed near some of the beer booths, but it really wasn’t that far to walk to the nicer stadium bathrooms.

The Entertainment

Music

This was by far the best part of the festival. Entertainment was hosted by Festmeister Hans and he was seriously awesome. When we first chimed in to his act on stage, we were a little confused and couldn't figure out if he was actually German or just being funny with his very thick German accent.

Festmeister Hans giving a great performance

Crystal seriously loves Festmeister Hans

Regardless, the more we listened to him the more we were drawn to his awesome beats and entertainment. He’s a great singer, super funny, and really knew how to draw in a crowd. We were so impressed that we had to Google him and found out that he performs Oktoberfests all over the world. If I was throwing an Oktoberfest event, I would 100% hire this guy so it’s no wonder everyone does. If you end up at an Oktoberfest and see him as the lead entertainment, definitely check him out.

Contests

There were a couple of contests held throughout the day. One of them was for “Best Dressed” and the other one was a beer holding contest. We missed the “Best Dressed” contest and didn’t even see who won. I think we were eating when that was going on, but we’re pretty sure whoever was wearing a fab lederhosen won.

We did however participate in the beer holding contest. We were playing giant Jenga when we heard the announcement for this contest and at first we hesitated to join in on the fun, but decided last minute to give it a go. It was such a popular contest that they were running out of beer mugs for everyone. We didn’t win, but they did let all the contestants keep the huge (and heavy) beer mug as a gift for participating.

Candy and our friend, Diane, doing their best at the Beer Holding contest

NFL Bus

This was a super random thing at the festival, but it ended up being so much fun. Yes, we love these cheesy fun interactive promotional booths, but the production and quality of this one was superb. We don’t even watch football but we had such a great time on this bus.

They had all the lights set up just like a real live studio (give me all the light you got!) and they even had a little video booth where you recorded your name and college, which then generated a twelve second clip of the your bio (designed to look like a football player’s bio) that you generally see on the lower left side of your TV screen during a football game.

They did such a great job with lighting in this truck

Final Thoughts

In the beginning, we were a little worried that the festival was going to be a little underwhelming, but it actually turned out to be a great time with friends and the entertainment was awesome. We aren’t keen on mass crowds, so this festival was perfect for us. There wasn’t ever a huge line for the bathrooms or beer and we were never pushing our way through crowds of people. It was pretty chill and a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon with friends. If you’re a craft beer lover, $40 for all you can drink for four hours is a pretty decent deal.

TIPS:

Bring a lawn blanket or a lawn chair if you want to sit or relax in the shade since there is limited seating.
Avoid wearing a skirt or dress. I didn’t’ think we would be sitting on the grass, so I regretted wearing a dress. It was not very comfy.
The ticket states no dogs; however, we saw a few dogs there that were clearly not service dogs. So if you must bring your dog, I would say to give it a try. They didn’t’ seem to be strict about it.