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My regret was that one time I went and picked him and his play up, and there were tons of abandoned tents, I should have grabbed a few good ones!
Long Post Alert !!
From where I’m sitting Download has become another product designed by a greedy corporation with the intention of ripping off the consumer at every opportunity.
Cost - This year was £345 for the full 5 day camping, advertised as being a 4 day festival and that it was going to be huge, in reality the Thursday didn’t start till nearly 16:00 and when you add up the total bands there were actually only 9 more bands than your average 3 day Download. 9 bands over 4 stages and a whole day. Brilliant. Food and Drink was extortionate, I understand everything has gone up but £7 for poor beer and £3.60 for a CAN of water. (I’ll come to my can issue later). At one point I was charged £20 for a mixed kebab and chips. If you are taking a family it would be crippling.
Line up – I think the lineup was really weak this year, I know a lot of that is preference but when you look at the size of bands in historical years compared to this year, one cant help but feel they blew the budget on two nights of Metallica and Slipknot. 2010 for instance; ACDC, RATM, Aerosmith, Deftones, Megadeath, Motorhead, Stone temple pilots, 30 seconds to Mars, Stone Sour, Billy Idol, Slash, KSE. There are some huge names there and I haven’t touched the smaller stages. 2013 was also a big year. I also think BMTH (I’m not overly a fan) really demonstrated that its time to let some new bands headline, especially when you’re giving Metallica 2 days. I’m a Metallica fan but understandably they looked very tired the second day and I found their performance very boring. Let the new wave of bands do some headlining!
Sound issues – I have never been to a festival where so many bands had so many issues. There were noticeable FOH issues with Metallica with Kirk’s guitar often not coming through FOH, Clutch had terrible problems with IEM’s, something I don’t think they usually use. Bob Vylan had problems with backing, Dinosaur Pile Up lost half their set time because of unexplained technical issues. Placebo had back line issues. Caskets was quite possibly the worst sound I’ve ever heard, but that may have been a result of the 4th stage facing the mainstage so the noise pollution was bad. It was also set strangely uphill making it hard to see from the back. A strange decision but what do I know ?! I wonder if they sound engineer company are the cheapest possible one they could find?
Recycling – This kind of ties in with price, the festival gave the big recycling pledge. This involved groups of 4 household wheelie bins dotted around the festival. These bins weren’t emptied all day, which meant that within an hour they were overflowing and the festivals neat recycling centres had become mountains of cross contaminated waste. I refuse to believe these piles were then being sorted through before the arena opened the next morning. Aligned with this was the fact you could no longer buy a plastic bottle of water. Which I am all for. They didn’t sell plastic bottles because of recycling and becoming eco, great. What they did conveniently sell were £3.60 cans of water. Cans that cannot be sealed if reused as a drinking vessel, rendering them pretty useless. I genuinely feel this was just a tactic to rinse more money out of people. The disregard for their own recycling system and complete lack of water points to refill a bottle if you had brought one into the arena all points to a scheme to make you keep buying cans of water. Paper cups?! What happened to the deposit scheme with a proper plastic cup you could take home?!
Water Points – There weren’t enough and there never is. On top of that the water pressure was weaker than a piss stream, meaning people were queuing for sometimes over an hour, on the hottest day of the year, with no shade, for some water. Again a complete lack of regard for the welfare of the consumer. Don’t worry though, you can just buy another £3.60 can.
Shade – Would it really take much to put up some more covered areas? Canopies, sails, etc. I saw people desperate for shade actually collapsing or breaking down in tears.
Toilets – This was mostly in the campsite. This year they split the Male and Female toilets, which seems strange in an age of non assuming genders and a festival with the androgynous Placebo playing. The quiet campsite had queues of over 1km long in the morning. People were waiting 2 hours to use the toilet. I feel that splitting the toilets isn’t a bad thing. But at a festival which is, what I would estimate 75% male you need more male toilets. In the quiet campsite there were 100 female toilets and 30 male. There were genuine Woodstock vibes in the air, with people ripping the signs down by the third day and just using any toilet.
Merch – Hideously expensive, with people who used click and collect queuing two hours to be told their order wasn’t there. They also didn’t limit the special items. Like the Metallica posters and hoodies. One guy on Ebay is selling 3 of each at over £200. Scalping scumbag. Plus how can they charge full price for tshirts where half the bands have pulled out or changed?!
Free Stuff – I know we live in a world where everything is going up and nothing is free, but in previous years there would be the Jager Ice truck, giving away free merch, the Pepsi Max stand giving away free lunchbox size cans of Pepsi, I think even Crave cereal were there on year giving free cereal away. None of that this year.
Entertainment – In between bands specifically, the same 4 min advert real for Nordic Spirit, Redbull, etc…..because we aren’t spending enough money already. What happened to the music between bands and the camera crew filming the crowd? with people trying to get onto the big screen. The ability to text the big screen with a funny message for all to enjoy. No instead we have to watch the same adverts with that fucking Genexis BMTH advert, over and over and over. There was a noticeable lack of atmosphere this year and little things like this contribute to that.
Traffic – We all know how bad that was, it made national news, 20 years of doing that, how did they get it so wrong? The second day there was to be an announcement at 8am with regard to which junction to take. It came at 09:04. Why say 08:00 if you’re not going to honour it.
Ignorance – The festival didn’t acknowledge a single thing, they are still banging on now like it was a huge success, ignoring their own comments section. Take clutch for example, they put a post up, but didn’t once apologise to the fans or the band publicly for the sound issues. Just pretended it didn’t happen. They didn’t acknowledge FFDP pulling out or wished them well, just announced Skindred as a replacement. They just seem completely delusional. Nothing Nowhere pulled out and not a single thing was said.
Chairs - Bring your chair into the arena by all means, but they shouldn’t be allowed inside the first barrier where the pits and things happen. The amount of old men asleep in chairs 5 rows from the front, waiting for Metallica. Not cool.
As you can tell I’ve had a lot to say on this with nobody to say it to, so I apologise for this rant! But I am genuinely interested to see what other people think. I feel like the festival lets its longest customers down by getting progressively worse. Its become like every other big corporation, its interested in nothing but making as much profit as they can. I understand the profit is important but I feel they are in rip off territory now. A new generation coming through don’t know any different and quite frankly deserve better.
Go to Rock Am Ring or Rock Im Park in Germany to see how a festival should be done.
Ebay mark7777_1
We got there on the Thursday about 12pm and drove straight in without issue, but getting out was another story. Apparently there's a lockdown on all car parks until the main arena is empty but this is not explained anywhere. We sat there for 2 hours barely moving and not a single steward was present to direct traffic. It was a total free-for-all and we eventually got home at about 2.30am. We abandoned the car park idea after that and used the East Mids Parkway park and ride shuttle bus, which was much better. I later learned that they were directing any and all other ticket holders to the south car park, which should be for day and weekend ticket holders only, due to all the others being full.
I'm of the opinion that they completely oversold tickets. The site was rammed, bins overflowing (I didn't see any recycling bins, so I'm surprised to hear that they were there), and massive queues for the limited facilities.
Also, and maybe this had something to do with the number of people, but we didn't have our tickets checked once. They were more concerned about the contents of my bag to make sure we didn't sneak something in that they could charge us for once inside. On day one, we parked up, walked over the bridge, had our bags checked and that was it. Straight in. Considering that you could pay on entry to park, we could feasibly have got into the festival for free. Perhaps many people did?
Food and drink was overpriced, which is standard for a festival I guess but yeah, I dread to think how much I spent on the two of us.
As for the second stage - lots of issues there as @Rkphilpot stated. I witnessed Cancer Bats, Elvana, and Dinosaur Pile Up (who pulled no punches about how poorly organised it was) all have their sets cut short with the first two literally having the main faders dropped mid-song.
However, a highlight was seeing my lad close to tears as Metallica started their Ecstasy Of Gold intro. He's 18 and it was his first time seeing them, and it was an emotional moment. I remember feeling the same when I first saw them aged 16 in 1990. We hugged, both with tears in our eyes. Worth the price of entry alone and a moment that will stay with us forever.
Another highlight was watching The Bronx. My boy decided he'd leave me there and go to watch WVH on the main stage. About 15 minutes later I saw him appear on the big screens in the circle pit with the singer of The Bronx! "WVH was boring so I came back"
I can't help but think a race track isn't the best venue when you have to walk round it and aren't allowed across it.
Thought the whole thing was badly organised, especially parking/ exiting - no marshals to be seen at the exit directing cars safely, just a mad every-man-for-himself scramble across an unlit field.
Oh and the Metallia tees had Donington spelled wrong on them.
Wouldn’t go again even if it was free and The Beatles were headlining with support from Elvis, Zeppelin and Hendrix.
I can’t hack big venues anymore. It’s just not nearly as enjoyable. As far as outdoor stuff goes, the one day 4-5 good bands setup is what I prefer. Those are the best ones I’ve been to… but it’s been a while.
As for "when am I ready?" You'll never be ready. It works in reverse, you become ready by doing it. - pmbomb
It was definitely oversold this year, from what I can remember, the busiest year and last sell-out was when Black Sabbath got back together and played. I think that was 2012. That was a reported sellout and wasn't as busy as the oversold Thursday this year.