The scale of this event is bigger than any Ingress anomaly until now. Also, all players seem to be concentrated into a smaller area than Ingress events, which further complicates things. I think the main issue they could not control today is that Verizon ran out of bandwidth and people simply couldn't connect.
Another difference with Ingress events - the Go Fest is a closed venue with security and ticket validation at the gate. In Ingress, you usually validate your ticket beforehand and don't have to worry about queues in the hours before the actual event stats.