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Furious parents are demanding refunds from a London children’s festival which they have branded a “complete shambles”.

Customers at the Monstrous Festival, held at Printworks in Surrey Quays, claim they queued for an hour to get into the event before discovering it was very different to what had been advertised.

People travelled from across the country after spending up to £32.50 a ticket for the festival which promised a funfair, unicorn petting area and one of the “biggest inflatable zones in the world”.

But many complained of poor organisation, endless queues and "laughable" activities, with a Facebook group launched to help punters get their money back.

Lynsey Mitchell, who travelled an hour with her eight-year-old son, teenage daughter and husband to attend the festival, said: “I could not believe how bad it was. To me, it was embarrassing.

“The queues inside were worse than the queues outside, and you didn’t even know what you were queueing for.

“The different zones were just fold-out tables and the circus was one man in a space smaller than my front room. There was no funfair at all.”

She added: “You were constantly expecting someone to come out and tell you it was a joke. It was laughable."

The event’s organisers have apologised for “major issues” regarding queueing and said they were investigating complaints.

They also admitted a 900ft inflatable obstacle course – named the Beast – had to be split in two due to health and safety concerns.

Jade Cameron, who attended with her eight-year-old daughter, said they waited in line for an hour for the inflatable course but “it was over within two minutes”.

“When we got there we had to queue for an hour just to get into the festival, then we waited in another queue to get our tickets scanned,” she said.

“It was basically just a massive run-down warehouse. In my opinion, it was a complete rip-off.”

Promotional materials for the festival, which was held in a south-east London warehouse, showed people frolicking in a grassy field bathed in sunshine.

Ms Cameron, a make-up artist, added: “My little girl cried because she was so excited to pet the unicorn but it wasn’t there.

“We queued up but were told the unicorn - a horse with a horn attached - had been taken away because there were too many lights and it got scared.”

Other punters took to social media to complain that stalls had run out of food before the afternoon session had even begun.

Mryna Infanta said her family were excited to visit “what looked like an amazing place on the website”, but admitted they ended up “very disappointed”.

“It was poorly organised and it was nowhere near what it said on the website,” she told the Standard.

A spokesperson for Monstrous Festival told the Standard: “First of all we would like to thank all our guests who attended Monstrous Festival. This was our first year and whilst we worked hard to ensure the festival was successfully delivered, we did unfortunately have some major issues regarding queuing. For that we are sincerely sorry.

“After much deliberation we decided to split our giant inflatable into two sections across two floors to ensure the activity had a sufficient amount of room.

“We are collating all feedback and currently in the process of ensuring that all our guests’ concerns are addressed as swiftly as possible.”