Barrel Tasting: Disneyland for Adults

MARCH 2, 2010

Barrel Tasting: Disneyland for Adults

By TR

Barrel Tasting advance ticket sales ended yesterday with excellent response-that bribe of $10 off per advance ticket really seems to work-all part of trying to make the Event run smoothly for our guests and wineries so that we avoid check-in bottlenecks and can better gage how to stage the Event- where to send the correct amount of Event glasses, wristbands and other supplies.  Without this advance knowledge, would be like waging a war with no idea where to supply and protect the troops and gird them for success!

Speaking of tactical assistance, we just received, hot off the presses, the 2010 Wine Road Map- gorgeous-reminds me of the Disneyland map showing all the enchanted lands, but with our AVA’s instead.  Sometimes answering our 800 Wine Road line I do think of Disneyland staff answering the same or similar queries on a daily basis, which brings me to something I like to think of as “Wine Road Favorite Queries”:

Barrel Tasting does not sell out, so now guests who did not purchase in advance online can just show up at any participating winery the day of the Event- $30 per person per weekend, $10 for Designated Drivers.  Here is my favorite from BT 2010- this is quite a common query no matter how we phrase the bit about the Designated Driver Ticket being $10:

Hello,
I see we can get a designated driver for $10.  How does that work?  Does this driver supply the car?  Does this driver take us to all the wineries in the area?
I look forward to your response.
Thank you,
Name changed to protect the innocent

 

I felt like saying that the kind of driver you get and the kind of vehicle would be more than suspect and less than deluxe- but probably best, in this case to “don’t speak, don’t speak.”

Here is an inquiry I received from one of our member wineries asking me about places to stay along the Wine Road; I referenced our 56 Associate Lodging Members and how they appear on wineroad.com and on the Map.  The winery person then asked me:

“What is a ‘lodg-ing’?”

It is very difficult to make information clear-for example, this year we tried setting allocations on each winery location for ADVANCE CHECK-INS- not for participating or visiting, but merely for ADVANCE CHECK-INS- and no matter how we phrased it, we still had people try to submit their itineraries to us for the whole of the Event, asking me where on the ticketing page they could let me know their exact plans for the whole day- and even now, just had a question about which of our wineries are selling tickets at the door when some of them were “SOLD OUT”- must again reiterate, with a smile on my face, that NO WINERIES ARE SOLD OUT- all are selling for $30 at the door.  Yes, all of them- and no, limos are NOT the same as buses- at least not to the best of my knowledge.