Thank You / Feedback / Next Year!

Firstly, a big thank you to every single person who came to this year's event and helped make it another fantastic and successful Cajun and Zydeco festival at Gloucester Guildhall!

We hope you enjoyed it as much this year as you have every other year, and really look forward to welcoming you in 2013 for our 20th anniversary.

Whilst you were all given a feedback survey when you picked up your tickets / wristband, and we have feedback from a lot of you, the more the merrier - so if you didn't get a chance to fill in a survey, or you've thought of anything you forgot to add since the weekend, please by all means drop us an email with the subject 'Cajun 2012 Feedback'. We're especially interested to hear any ideas for who you might want to see playing next year. Once we've been through the feedback, we'll aim to post a summary and possibly some of the actions we intent to take as a result.

Next year's festival will run from Friday 25th - Sunday 27th January, probably with a later start time on the Friday, as many of you have requested this. Super Early Bird tickets are available for just a few more hours at the price of £40, before the normal Early Bird tickets kick in tomorrow at £50. Head over to the tickets page to buy yours now!

All that remains is to thank you again, and say how much we look forward to seeing you all in 12 months.

Picture: Nigel Bewley

Under 10s Free!

So the weekend has nearly arrived, but before it does...

Just a quick note to say we'll be allowing Under 10s into the festival for free this year. We have had a lot of customers asking about bringing their children, and grandchildren, and introducing them to cajun music, but not wanting to pay £30-£60 for the priviledge!

So, we've decided that aged 10 seems a fair cut-off point, and anyone under that age can come in free. 10s and over will have to have paid tickets, sorry!

New Band Added!

With just a couple of days to go until the festival, we're happy to announce a late addition to the line-up, in the shape of Charlie and Phil - Charlie Skelton performed last year as part of Acadian Driftwood, and Phil Underwood you know from leading our Zydeco dance workshops over the weekend.

Full details of the band have been added to the lineup page.

In other news, due to some maintenance work being carried out in the building this week, the customer lift will unfortunately be out of order for the duration of the festival weekend. This is something we have been working hard to try and avoid, but that has not been possible. If any festival goers could please make any necessary arrangements, we will do our best to support you all as much as possible. If this will cause you any difficulties, please contact us as soon as you can.

Feedback / Tours / Price Freeze

Just a quick follow on from yesterday's message, we now in fact will not be able to offer the Eastgate Chamber tours as we did last year unfortunately, as the chamber is being renovated over that weekend, the permission and funding has just been granted, so apologies for that. They'll be back in 2013, don't you worry.

Secondly, we're always trying to find ways to improve the festival and love hearing any feedback from you all about any aspects of the event, from the timings, choice of performers, workshops, down to the food. We'll be carrying out surveys over the festival weekend again, and look forward to hearing what you all have to say! Please be aware though, that we get a lot of conflicting comments, and it's very difficult to please everyone. One very obvious example of this is the finish time on the Sunday night. We brought this forward last year in response to a lot of feedback we'd had from customers travelling from long distances who had to book an extra day off work and an extra night in a hotel instead of travelling back on Sunday and going back to work on Monday. Then after the 2011 event we were given a mix of feedback from some people thanking us for listening, and others complaining about the change. So whilst we do try and listen to and act on all your comments wherever possible, please do bear in mind that other people might not share your views, and we have to try and take a balanced and considered approach to try and cater for as many people as possible.

Lastly, we'll be selling the Super Early Bird tickets again over the festival weekend for the 2013 event, but we've decided that the ticket prices will remain the same for the 2013 festival. Just thought you'd like to know!

That's it for now.

It's nearly time!

The 19th Gloucester Cajun and Zydeco festival is less than two weeks away, and our toes are already tapping with excitement!

Tickets have been flying out, so make sure you get yours soon before they sell out.

All the band details and times are on the line-up page, and if you want any more info please drop us a line to ask.

We'll be running the city tours again over the weekend, so keep an eye out for details of them over the next couple of days.

Other than that, we look forward to seeing you on the dancefloor!