Fraudulent disaster
Fraudulent disaster! With joyful anticipation I had joined "Museums by Candlelight Valletta" which has been promoted to be "more magical than ever", with the possibility to visit 5 sites between 19:00 and 24:00.
Well, the name of the event should better have been "Queuing up in Valletta", because obviously, in order to make the maxiumum amount of money, not as many tickets have been sold which would be able to comfortably accomodate the visitors, but as many tickets as possible - regardless of the completely excessive number of visitors! As result, queues of a hundred meters and more formed in front of virtually every sight - not only at an eventual peak time, but during all the 5 hours! Like sheep, people lined up for hours to wait for spending a few minutes in completely overcrowded sights. Is it possible to be more disrespectful, derogatory and ripping off tourists and locals alike?
The climax of the arrogance and contempt towards the paying visitors occurred at around 23:40 in front of St. John's Co-Cathedral: there were still around 30 to 50 people who wanted to visit the church. Behind me was a small group of Maltese and Gozitan visitors, who were told by security that they were the last people to be admitted to the church.
Instead, security closed the gate at 23:45 just in front of me and told those waiting few people that the church was closed and said: “The Heritage Malta staff have already gone home”!
Not only was this a veritable breach of contract, as the visit to the sights was officially agreed in writing on the ticket “until 00:00”, but the incredible ignorance of those responsible on site and the disregard for the people who had paid money and queued for hours speaks volumes about what Heritage Malta thinks of its paying visitors - namely nothing at all!
With these experiences, I see this event as nothing else than a fraudulent disaster and I am NOT WILLING to support this kind of unscrupulous rip-off with one single Euro!
So, as a matter of principle, I want my money back asap and I will avoid all Heritage Malta events in the future and advise everyone to do the same!!