Fans gather on Pine Ave. as the Reverend Horton Heat set begins. Photo by Sherwood Souzankari.

Organizers from Saturday’s Horton’s Hayride event will be issuing refunds to those who were unable to get into the event after the event oversold, officials said Monday.

Scott Tucker, lead organizer of the event featuring rockabilly trio The Reverend Horton Heat, said there were a lot of factors that caused the event to be overcrowded and oversold.

“The capacity was set by the city as is normal in a meeting and based on the layout we provide,” he said. “That layout did not include some of the shade structure or sponsor infrastructure that ended up in the show nor did it include the size of the bar that we ended up with due to beer trucks and ice cooler. This lowered the capacity of the event during operating hours and made us go into an oversold situation.”

Long Beach Fire Department personnel who were at the event, holding down Pine Avenue from Third Street to Broadway, said they had to begin turning people away, including some who already had tickets.

“We did have to limit access into the venue because we were at capacity,” said LBFD spokesman Brian Fisk.

Tucker said those who were not admitted into event and had tickets are recorded on a refund sheet, which will be handled shortly.

The Reverend Horton Heat maintained on their Facebook page that they were still able to make lemons into lemonade.

“People that couldn’t get into the gates could watch for free from either side of the street,” they said when asked about the show being oversold. “The City of Long Beach and the businesses in the area benefitted from having all those people there to spend their money.”

Reverend Horton Heat fan Erin Murphy said on a Facebook event page that she wasn’t allowed back in after leaving briefly to get food.

“They didn’t let us back in even though we had tickets,” she said. “Fortunately, we found a good spot on the sidewalk, but they definitely had capacity issues.”

Tucker said the first annual show was an overwhelming success, and he’s hoping to move it to Rainbow Harbor or Shoreline Village next year to fix capacity issues.