Been routinely attending SoCal and domestic massives for almost a decade and this was truly a top 3 worst experience of my rave career as an attendee. So many aspects were bad it’s hard break it down but these are my highlights:

1. Parking lots were full by 6:30pm and everyone arriving past that time was diverted to distant lots which then required people to use shuttles to get closer to the venue. These shuttles had long lines themselves and it took us over 1.5hrs to get on one to return to our car after the festival. It was awful to get back to our car at 3:30am.

2. Event was overcrowded as fuck, as predictable by the parking situation. Stages were packed out so deep it was unbelievable. You either had to choose between pushing your way into incredibly claustrophobic conditions or be subject to massive trains passing you every 30 seconds and attempting to pick your pockets. Shitty choice to have to make at every stage.

3. The crowds were disrespectful as fuck. My girlfriend was groped hard within an hour by a passerby in a train and younger attendees were super sloppy and didn’t respect personal space whatsoever. I know it’s hard to keep a distance at festivals believe me, but when you decide to forcibly break out into headbanging when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else, you’re an inconsiderate asshole, hard stop.

4. Moving from stage to stage was extremely difficult and, unless you were already at said stage, you might as well just resign yourself to the absolute very back because of how dense and stubborn the crowds were. It was impossible to see more than one, maybe two, acts from a respectable distance even when you planned ahead and left with some time to spare to get a good spot. It was pointless, really.

In sum total, I think this was the pinnacle of Insomniacs chronic issue with overselling events and, more specifically, Nos festivals. It’s happened before to varying degrees and been tolerable, but coming from someone who’s been to this venue with these show producers for over 8 years… this was genuinely disappointing on every front. While I can’t say I know exactly how, I fully believe that some kind of accountability needs to be demanded by the rave community as a whole now because it is genuinely unsafe to gamble on a show’s capability to handle it’s crowd capacity, especially when that company has been in business for decades and should absolutely know better than this.

Unless such a time comes, I might need to take a long break from these events because I simply can’t stand the idea of paying hundreds to subject myself to that kind of experience.