To clarify the reason for the SnapeFest age requirement

SnapeFest is not organized by the Portus Staff, or by HPEF. SnapeFest is organized by Snapecast LLC with is not a 501 (c) (3) organization. Therefore Snapecast was free to determine our own age policy for SnapeFest.

In doing so, we first looked to Portus’ policy which requires attendees between the ages of 14 and 17 to have a chaperone. Like Portus, the formal programming at SnapeFest is aimed towards an adult audience; therefore we decided that our age policy should be at least as strict as Portus
policy. We chose to make it even more restrictive (plus 18) because we cannot be responsible for making sure that the 14-17 year olds have a chaperone during formal programming. Allowing chaperones would also make the costs of SnapeFest increase because all participants will receive a free meal paid for by Snapecast LLC. If Snapecast LLC had to pay for the meal of an underage person plus a chaperone, the costs would be too high to justify holding the event. Remember that SnapeFest is limited to only 50 people.

The above reasoning explains why the policy requires attendees to be over 18 . We chose to impose the additional requirement that SnapeFest attendees be over 21 because during informal programming (the dinner after the formal programming) there will likely be drinking. SnapeFest is a small conference and has no sponsors other than Snapecast LLC; therefore it is too much of a legal risk for us to be responsible for making sure that underage people do not consume alcohol during the informal programming. Snapecast LLC is already expending a great deal of money to hold SnapeFest and is not even breaking even in terms of costs. We do not want to risk the additional expense of a costly lawsuit. The easiest way for us to avoid this liability is to make the event 21 plus.

So we are very sorry that underage Snape fans cannot Snape with us at SnapeFest. However, in the past Snapecast has held informal meetups for fans of all ages that have been very successful. We would like to encourage Snape fans under 21 to organize these events because they will be just as fun (if not MORE fun) than SnapeFest.