Last night, my wife, two friends, and I went to a Celebrate the Macallan event in Washington D.C. We drove down from Columbia, hopped on the D.C. Metro, and walked about ten minutes or so to the Andrew Mellon Auditorium on Connecticut Avenue. When got there at around 8:20ish for an 8:30 event and the line was pretty long, but we weren’t worried.

We weren’t worried until one of the staff walked to the group in front of us and warned that the building only held 200 and they were around 220. Yikes. We didn’t travel nearly an hour just to turn around and go back!

Fortunately, they decided to let everyone in but only take the first 200 into the actual presentation and event. We first went into the entryway of the building, where small tables were setup along with a bar. As you entered, you were given a gold Macallan token that you could trade in for a sample of their 10 Year Fine Oak. We immediately made our way to the bar to get our sample!

As we waited in the next line to get into the presentation, we discovered that we were the first group to be denied entry. 🙁 When we peeked inside, we saw that the other room they were in was packed to the gills. Even if we were let in, it wouldn’t have made for an all too pleasant experience.

We stayed in the outer room where very light h’orderves were served and were treated to samples of the Macallan 18, a treat we certainly accepted as a nice consolation prize. All in all, we still had a good time. They offered to put us on the VIP list for another event this week, which simply meant we were given priority to get in, but we didn’t think we’d make the trip a second time.

In the future, I hope Macallan fixes their RSVP system so that they don’t have this problem but they handled the circumstances quite well.