The Fit Expo is an annual must for us in LA, but this year was very disappointing. It was poorly…read moreorganized, with people cutting lines, and the women at the booths lacked customer service skills. There were fewer booths this year.

This event could use some better planning. When you drive into the convention center, there's no…read moresignage telling you where thefitexpo is. You figure it out on your own and then realize you could have parked closer. They soak you for $30 on parking, too. Then you get in line and there is no one guiding the huge crowd. People are forming a looping line around the building. After 30 minutes of waiting, an employee came out and moved the line. She told us that "people without wristbands should hang a left" when they go through the glass doors. Actually, hanging a left brought you to checkins for martial arts shows. The second left brought you to thefitexpo checkin. So that miscommunication got the line all mixed up and people were confused and some waited in the wrong line. We figured it out and got in the right line, but we lost our place and were WAY further back now after waiting 1 hour outside. Aggravating, unprofessional experience. Only one appearance by one employee giving incorrect instructions to hundreds of people. Fortunately, a nice couple recognized us from outside and the woman called us over to get in line with them since she saw we lost our place. They were unhappy with the unorganized mess, too. My advice is to get serious about managing the crowd outside the event. You need way more employees guiding the crowds with accurate information. When you have hundreds of people at an event, this is not an appropriate time for self service, figure it out on your own stuff. I was annoyed before I entered the event. The event itself had some good and bad. There were lots of booths with free samples, which was good. It was a big crowd, but there was a lot of space on the floor, so that was good, as well. Plenty of bathrooms were available. Now for the bad...I wanted to see the powerlifting competition, the bodybuilding competition, strongman, and jiu-jitsu, but everything was going on all at the same time. The schedule they emailed me made it look like the shows were staggered. We had to go back and forth between powerlifting and bodybuilding missing parts of each. That was disappointing. They had photo opportunities with celebrities, which is very popular. We made the rounds and one thing I noticed was that Jay Cutler's booth handled this professionally. He had proper lighting and a woman there to take photos with your phone. I was very happy to have her do it instead of me because I was carrying bags and had to fumble around taking a photo with one hand. None of the other celebrities took it as seriously and didn't do this. They should all do it like Jay did. Elevate the sport and show your fans that you care. Jay impressed me by doing these simple things. I was a little frustrated by the fact that the event didn't seem well managed. There didn't seem to be a lot of celebrities there, either. At past events, celebrities were roaming all over the place. I guess it's changed.

What a great walk and even this was! Came here a few weekends ago for this event and I must say,…read morefor being only its 4th year it was real nice. The crowds came out even though it felt 100 degrees out. So many vendors with so much information. If they keep doing this event in this area I will definitely come back. One of the vendors here was 24hr Homecare and they provided me with so much good info. I would def I rely recommend coming out and supporting this cause next year again. Only challenge here was the parking but it was free so can't complain much about that part. Again, will be back next year for this event for sure. Music, freebies, water, light snacks for everyone!

Great festival and walk for families and everyone! This festival is to promote acceptance and…read moreinclusion of people with Down syndrome and to celebrate Down syndrome awareness month in October. There's food, games, performances and vendor booths for everyone!

Got a Summit Pass and it's been worth it so far!…read more Techweek is a 3 day festival right on the Santa Monica Pier and I would describe it as Coachella for geeks and that's perfect for me. Great speaking engagements including Susan Paley the former CEO of Beats by Dre. Fantastic start up tech companies giving tons of cool swag. I especially liked Zeel which was providing complimentary chair massages and discount cards on in-home massage purchases! Plus I noticed Yelp is a sponsor and this feels like a mega yelp event with an iHeartMomo photobooth, a Jarritos drink bar, and more. The Summit Pass lets you into most speaking events and I felt like that was useful so you can hear and learn about how tech is constantly innovating and what is successful. The Rockspace booth was especially cool to get a Starbucks gift card and beer/cocktail tickets. There's a ton of vendors and the schedule is jam packed but 3 days is more than enough to check them all out. Great festival overall and I'm looking forward to day 3. Tip: parking off Ocean under the pier was $6

FRAUD ALERT!!!!!! - Canned Tuna is now considered tech?…read more SMELLS FISHY. Where do I begin? So, most of the events were canceled at the last minute. The judges for the competition were actually there to sell you their service. The rules for competition included "...no company that has raised more than $3 million can compete.." So, the finals included (shocker) a company that raised $12 million as the Co-Founder of Canned Tuna Company so elegantly mentioned on stage in front of the judges. Oh yeah, they sell Canned Tuna in over 150 stores. How is that a start-up? How is that a tech company? And what about the $3 million cap? I asked the person in charge and the response was...."you misunderstood the part about $12 million funding." Not sure that was an answer to my question.. but hey, if I had $12 million in funding I would probably beat out every one else too. In any case, isn't this supposed to be about startups - the 2 guys in a garage with an idea and no money. You know, the reason all of us get into this. We have an idea, little money and lots of will power. So, the investor meetings that I paid over $150 for were ummm, interesting.. Most of the investors did not show up. ( Surprised? ) The ones who attended were ...shall I say, not forthright about why there were there. Well, actually one was. He told me he was not there to find a company. Still not sure just why he was there. But anyway. Oh yeah, just to add a little more salt in the proverbial wound....No refunds. I left feeling like I had been scammed and I have learned that if you feel like that it's probably because it's true. Congratulations Techweek. You took home a lot of money this week. You swindled a ton of cash out us hopeful wide-eyed trusting entrepreneurs. NOTE: Do not go here. I repeat. Do not go here.

It had cool shit to do, lots of room to wander and a good lineup on Saturday. Flume, Chromeo, St…read more Lucia... I understood the whole snowboard competition thing, but when all that was over and someone was willing to let me use his board, plus there was no one on the snow ramp, why wouldn't they let me snowboard down like one time!? It would only take a second, geez. I had fun on Saturday and everyone who attended was seriously PLUR and the bomb dot com, including the merchandise young woman who helped me A LOT. She went super duper out of her way to find me a small jacket when they checked the other booth, made a phone call of some sort, 2 people were looking in the back, the mannequin had on a size Large and then suddenly she came out seriously genuinely happy for me with the small that I wanted, even though I wanted the jacket badly enough to agree to just buy the large one. She was really cool for doing all that. No one in LA goes to any trouble to help, but she really really did. She was on a mission and had no other reason to help me beside that she was an amazing individual. They had cool art work and a badass truck that I kept bothering security about to know whose the owner and if I could buy it right now. He did not even really speak in the same language as I did, so it was not going to happen and I was really sure I would drive off in that truck that night, which was Sunday because they painted it over those 2 days. The parking situation was not cool to say the least though- got to figure that one out. It was pouring rain on Sunday and they did a buy one shirt and get a sweatshirt free or probably vice versa, but you have to walk so many miles to your car because anywhere you park you'll either have to walk many miles to get in or to get out. That was my main complaint, but otherwise, I'll always go again. It was pretty rad.

This was my second year attending Air and Style. Last year I had an absolute blast and found that…read morethe event was very well organized with a really good lineup. However, this year was the complete opposite. My friend and I got VIP but only got mailed VIP bracelets and never actual tickets. I knew this seemed off because most other festivals have an area on the bracelets that is scannable for entry. After contact both FrontGate tickets and Air and Style directly, they had told me that all I needed were the bracelets to get in. However, upon arriving, the people scanning the tickets at the door told us we had to wait in the will call line to get tickets. I looked on the air and style Facebook page the next day and found that many other VIP people ran into the same problem. I don't know if they changed management this year or something but the event just seemed so much more unorganized. They released the app and set times only a day or two before the festival which made things more hectic in terms of planning. They also started running out of their drinks on day two. VIP didn't really come with many perks besides a separate bar and a front viewing area for the main stage so I don't think it's worth the money. However, Air and Style is worth it in my opinion if you're just buying GA tickets and the lineup is good as the 2017 one.

This event was okay, much smaller than I had anticipated seeing how it was the 10th annual event…read more The park was easy to get to, and plenty of parking. At first I had no idea where to go since I had never been here before, so make sure you tell the guy at the entrance you are here for this event and they will let you in sans charging you for parking. I asked and said I was lost and the guy told me where to go and let me in for free. For this event though, it does say free parking on their website, so let the entrance people know! I did donate the $20 to get the shirt and do some trick or treating with my pup. For your donation, you get 2 raffle tickets, a t-shirt, a water bottle and go trick or treating at the 6 stations they have. For your bag, it was just a plain plastic shopping bag. I think it would had been nicer to get a reusable bag... my plastic bag got all tore up. The 6 stations give you some candles for the 2 legged people and some dog treats/items for the 4 legged ones. Most dogs had some sort of costume. They also had some exhibitors giving out free samples as well. There was only one food truck present though and I hoped there would be more present. This event is free if you don't care about the swag. There was a dog musical command contest, service dog demo, and costume contest. Raffle prizes were all different and you put your ticket(s) into the one you want to enter. Today was hot. My suggestion would be to have water stations around for the doggies!! There were no water stations for the dogs. The park did have a doggie fountain nearby, but dogs need lots of water, especially when it is hot. It was a good thing I had my water bowl and gave my dog water. Would I go again. I think it was cool to check out, once. I doubt I would go again as the event was pretty small and Irvine is somewhat a bit of a drive for me. If I do happen to be in the area when the event is going on, then I pay stop by as it is free after all. I am glad my donation went towards a good organization.

Thanks to Natasha that my boyfriend and I had so much fun at this event! Scored myself a 3-days…read morepass, but I can only made it two days. Not sure what we have missed on Friday night, but Saturday and Sunday was awesome. It was a great experienced on both days, but would have been better if we can be able to go all three days. My boyfriend and I got there on Saturday around 5pm. Parkings there are not great at all. We went circling around the area for cheaper parkings like $5, but no luck; then we went to the place across from the Lagoon Rainbow Park. It's $1 per an hour, but way better than $15 for the parking structures. We rather save those parking fees for a food tasting at the event. We came back on Sunday around 7pm and this time we parked at the same place as on Saturday to save us some bucks for food....that's how we do it. When we got in, walked over to the Cinema Makeup School area for some free simple zombie makeup. Didn't know about the Long Beach Zombie Fest until this year. It was a very cool idea and very fun event. Great event opened out for just mainly focus on zombies of all kind and also good for family, kids, and friends; basically cool for all ages. So many people and kids have created their own creativities/arts on makeup and dressed up as zombies. It would so worth it to go for all three days because they have different bands and singers/artists performed each day in the evenings; more like different kind of fun with mazes, music, food vendors, and only cost $25 general admission fee included FREE souvenir E-Photo (which I forgot to claimed), great deal to me. Oh and children 12 and under are free. We were so dead tired on Sunday, but had a great time and very memorable event. Definitely look forward for another Long Beach Zombie Fest next year.

Zombie Glorified! If you love Zombies like me, you need to come to the Long Beach Zombie fest and…read moreZombie Walk! It's a smaller festival but it's fun to watch the others dressed up in costumes and masks. Some costumes and make up are really good and really gruesome. (check out my pictures attached) The Zombie fest has many booths of vendors selling their items, haunted maze, The escape bus, costume contest, dance contest, food trucks and alcohol. There are Tribute bands Bring cash if you can, some booths only accept cash or those that does accept credit cards, charge you a small fee to use your credit card. Cinema makeup school is the makeup provider for the Zombie Fest. You can get a simple zombie make up done for free or for $15 for a latex effect, and an additional charge for any kind of makeup makeover done the way you want. They have a free souvenir E-Photo Booth for everyone with all kinds of glory, scary props to use in your picture. This is awesome, what a great memory to have for this zombified event! Parking is $15 or you can park across the street for free or metered parking.

2014 Artopia at the Muzeo in Santa Ana:…read more This year was the first time that I attended Artopia. I have been to other OC Weekly events and each have been very fun. OC Decadence was pretty amazing! Artopia was pretty neat too. The choice of artists were very diverse, ranging from painting to miniatures to steam punk. In addition to the artists, there was plenty of music and entertainment. I got to see two pretty cool pole acts. My only complaint is in the food department. It didn't feel like there were a lot of restaurants participating. However, as an added bonus, the price of admission came with three drink samples. Free booze is always a plus. If you're looking for something to do on a Saturday night that's just a little different from other Saturday nights, Artopia is a good time. Get yourself added to OC Weekly's event mailing list for the latest info on their events.

So I went to the pamper me event in November with 3 of my best girlfriends! It was seriously a…read moregirlfriend retreat! We loved it. The venue was marvelous!!!! There's a beautiful view, a lot of grass area for the exercising activities and for people to walk around and inside was like a convention! There were booths everywhere and you were able to try/sample beauty products as well as purchase cute accessories! They have a bar at the front. My girls and I got some bloody marys and basically walked around. We attended 2 mini shows: one on styling your hair and one about love and spirituality. none of them were a waste of my time. I was quite entertained. We also attended a session where they teach you how to prep a healthy meal!!!! We were able to try it, and it was fantastic!!! There is so much to do at these events and it just gives you an excuse to gather your girls and spend the day together!!!!! You do have to pay beforehand to attend this event. it's 30.00, but with that, you also receive a bag full of cosmetics, beauty products, and anything having to do with women you name it!!!! You will honestly have a good time! The next event is nearing the end of this month, and I will be there!!!!

I wish there were 10 stars! This event is every woman's dream. Here's the top ten:…read more 1. Huge goodie bag with full size products. Products and samples you can actually use. Dry shampoo, nail varnish, body oil, protein bars, books, note pads and more. 2. Eye Candy!! Shirtless men with rock hard Abs walking around. 3. Free liquor!!! No need to even visit the paying bar. Stick to the free stuff 4. Location- beautiful view at the Terranea Resort 5. Cooking demonstrations. Recipes that are easy and tasteful 6. Plenty of vendors- beautiful jewelry and clothing for sale. Reasonable prices 7. Music- the DJ rocks! 8. Activities- plenty of cardio and yoga classes all day long 9. Hair demonstrations- get your sexy hair on! 10. Cheap tickets- check Groupon for a good deal. But at regular price the goodie bags were worth double!