You expected everyone to be sitting on the edge of their seats with excitement. That's not what happened, though. You got bogged down. Your players got bored and pulled out a card game. People got confused.
Pacing is a vital aspect of fiction which can enhance or destroy it.
Michael Moorcock's Corum novels are an exciting read because plot elements are thrown at the reader in rapid succession. They would be complete snoozers if they had a languid pace favouring long monologues and descriptions. Similarly, enjoying a novel like Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War would be difficult if the author didn't dwell lovingly over maniacally detailed descriptions instead of running through every plot item as quickly as possible. As in literature, role-playing games need to have proper pacing. A potentially exciting combat sequence can turn into long, dull periods of inactivity punctuated by a few die rolls.