How Fyre Festival became the worst music festival in history
Tickets to the Fyre Festival music festival cost several thousand dollars. The event promised to be grandiose, but something went wrong. The musicians did not arrive, there was no accommodation or food for the guests. Moreover, leaving home from this “festival of modern music” turned out to be quite difficult. Why did the festival, which had so much hope, become the worst in history?
In December 2016, an advertisement for the Fyre Festival music festival appeared online. It was supposed to take place on one of the Bahamas in April-May of the same year. The event was promoted by popular Instagram models, and among the guests of honor were the bands Major Lazer and Blink-182. Ticket prices were not cheap, because everything had to take place at one of the most expensive resorts in the Caribbean on the island of Exuma.
To attend the holiday you had to pay from 1,500 to 400,000 dollars. The most expensive ticket gave the right to 8 guests to stay in the Artist’s House villa on a separate VIP island. They planned to accommodate one of the musicians participating in the festival with them.
The enchanting event was to take place in two stages, from April 28 to 30 and from May 5 to 7. All tickets were sold out, and there were no signs of trouble. The first signal came just before the start. Just a day before the start of the festival, festival headliners Blink-182 announced that they would not attend. The musicians motivated their refusal by saying that they were not confident in the technical preparation of their performance.
After this, some guests began to complain that they were stuck at airports in Miami and the Bahamas and could not fly to Exuma Island. For some reason, the Fyre Festival organizers did not answer their calls and messages. But those who got to the place on time were not happy. Their luggage was dumped into a huge shipping container. To find their bags and suitcases, many had to spend several hours searching.
Hopes for good nutrition were also not justified. Instead of the best restaurant dishes promised in the advertisement, guests were fed cheese sandwiches. As it turned out, the catering company that was hired to serve the festival terminated the contract on April 2. Needless to say, the housing also did not live up to what was promised. Instead of comfortable bungalows, festival visitors were accommodated in tourist tents. Some of them were not installed correctly, and dusty mattresses lay on the ground around.
An attempt to complain failed. There was no one in the booths marked “Concierge” on the camp grounds. Immediately the guests began to hear rumors that the musicians might not come. It only took a few hours for Fyre Festival visitors to realize that it was time to leave the inhospitable tropical island.
One of the festival visitors said that she planned to find a hotel with a group of friends. But there were no available rooms anywhere, because at the same time a regatta was taking place on the island. The unlucky travelers managed to persuade a local school bus driver to take them to the airport. There, the friends successfully boarded a plane to Miami. But the flight was constantly delayed and passengers were asked to leave the plane. They moved into the stuffy air terminal building and began to wait for news.
It soon turned out that someone had locked the waiting room. The people inside were left without water, food or fresh air. Some even fainted, unable to bear the hardships. Fortunately, the misunderstanding was quickly resolved - the door was opened and water was brought to the people. All this time, guests received messages from the organizers of the Fyre Festival, which stated that the event was being postponed.
The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism began receiving hundreds of complaints from people stranded on the island. But the officials only replied that they had nothing to do with the festival. The musical festival was organized by private individuals and the authorities did not participate in it. It is worth adding that the festival organizers also washed their hands and did nothing.
For example, famous rapper Ja Rule, who positioned himself as a co-organizer of the Fyre Festival, tweeted that his heart was broken. He also said that “the festival was not a scam,” but he doesn’t know what went wrong. An announcement appeared on the official website of the event that due to circumstances beyond the control of the organizers, it was not possible to prepare the infrastructure.
Additionally, the resource reported that the Fyre Festival team is working to organize the departure of visitors from the island. As far as we know, everyone eventually solved this problem on their own. By the way, on the festival website there was a statement from the organizers that in the event of force majeure, money for tickets will not be returned. The events surrounding the Fyre Festival were so scandalous that in 2019 two documentaries were made about the incident.