Couldn't agree more.
A disspointing moment for me was when I had a perfect gaint lettuce, I got second place. While the ONLY other entry is a regular plain old normal gaint plant not even something rare. WHY? I don't know. Maybe they were sucking up to the judges while I was doing my cross stitch to pass time.
There is no way of knowing your competition before you select your entry. They could add a feature that allow your sims to "Ask around..." or "Spy on..." before the festival about who is your competition and what are they presenting/prepareing.
and for the Pies.... shouldn't we be able to try a piece afterwards?
We shouldn't have to wait for 8 sim hours just to get a pop-up notice. There should be awards given, after parties thrown and we get to go home
with a full belly and some souvenirs.