A YouTuber's convention turned into a 'Fyre Festival disaster' when 15,000 people showed up without

• YouTube star Tana Mongeau planned TanaCon, a convention for her fans, in California this past weekend.
• She expected 5,000 people, but 20,000 showed up.
• Thousands were left waiting in line in the heat for hours.
• The two-day convention was cancelled, and it's being compared to the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival.
• Mongeau apologized and said everyone will get a refund.

YouTube star Tana Mongeau threw a convention for her fans in Anaheim, California, this past weekend.

The beauty vlogger expected around 5,000 people to show up to see herself and other YouTube influencers like Casey Neistat, Shane Dawson, Miranda Sings, and actress Bella Thorne.

Mongeau underestimated her popularity. By a lot.

Twenty-thousand people showed up for TanaCon, overwhelming festival organizers and creating what some are calling "this year's Fyre Festival" — referring to the failed 2017 festival in the Bahamas that collapsed on itself, led to lawsuits for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and resulted in the indictment of festival organizer Billy McFarland.

It was supposed to be an alternative to VidCon.

Mongeau decided to organize TanaCon after a perceived snub by VidCon, the major annual festival for YouTubers thrown by Viacom and the "Vlogbrothers," Hank and John Green every year. Mongeau — who has 3.5 million followers on YouTube and is at the center of a network of other popular YouTubers — wasn't granted a "featured creators" badge by the festival, which would have granted her the amount of security she wanted.

So she planned TanaCon, her own festival, to take place the same weekend. It was a way to put herself and other creators in charge, instead of a large corporation.

"I wanted to throw a con where everyone is a featured creator," Mongeau said at TanaCon, according to a report from Polygon. "I wanted a con for bad b----es. TanaCon would be nothing without bad b----es."

The event aimed to be more accessible than VidCon. It cost $65 per ticket instead of $150 and promised a closer connection to the influencers who would attend. She recruited the event company Good Times Live to help put it together.

Inside, at first, things went smoothly. A couple of Mongeau's fans even got married onstage.

But the line letting people in moved slowly. By the early afternoon, thousands of people appeared to be waiting outdoors in the heat for hours.

Way too many people showed up.

By later in the afternoon, Mongeau and Good Times Live organizers realized there were simply too many people.

Mongeau told the YouTube show DramaAlert that the Anaheim Marriott Suites, where TanaCon was located, could hold 5,000 people. But an additional 15,000 people, she said, showed up without registering for tickets in advance.

According to Mongeau, unregistered people waiting in line were "pretending to have tickets, printing fake tickets, rushing the gates, jumping over people, throwing VidCon stuff, yelling 'f--- VidCon,' jumping over each other, [and] pushing people."  

The chaos led festival organizers to contact local police and fire marshals. They recommended shutting the whole thing down, Mongeau said, and she complied.

But her fans didn't react well.

One person said she spent $1,000 and drove 29 hours to be there, only to get kicked out shortly after she got in.

People posted videos of teens flooding the hallway.

They chanted "refund!" and "we want Tana!"

They booed an organizer who said the event was ending.

And people quickly drew comparisons to last year's Fyre Festival and 2014's DashCon, another festival that ended in disaster.

Mongeau scrambled to find a new venue — then shut the whole thing down.

After evacuating the Mariott Friday, Mongeau still had to figure out what would happen next. The festival was supposed to take place over the course of two days, and she needed a bigger place if it would continue on Saturday.

At first, Mongeau said she found a nearby location that would accomodate an additional 5,000 people. 

But on Saturday morning, Good Times Live backpedaled. In a statement, it said the event was cancelled.

"Our team has worked around the clock to find a solution to accommodate everyone safely and fairly, but at this point in time, there is no way to continue our weekend at TanaCon as is without risking the safety of all our Featured Creators," the statement reads. "At this time, we are working on a way to make this up to every single one of you."

Good Times also scrubbed the page for TanaCon from its website. The company didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.

In a series of tweets, Mongeau apologized for the fiasco, said she'd provide refunds for everyone, and said she's planning another event that would be free, accomodate more people, and have better security.

"i wanted to do something dope, and i know i could have done this a lot f---ing better," Mongeau told DramaAlert.

Mongeau didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.

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