31 replies to this topic

[gooner1990]

Sorry to start a negative thread, as I've just had my best Glastonbury ever!  


But we had real problems with getting all of our group in on Weds am.

We wanted to camp on Kidney Mead/Big ground so left nr Oxford at 5am Weds am. Got into car park around 8am, 4 of our cars were in E4 and another two (that got split en route) were in E1 at the top of the hill.

Started queing and those of us who were in E4 got in and pitched up by 9.30am....rang the others to see where they were and they were being held by security at the top of the hill, this went on and on, and our field was filling up so myself and two others from our group went back out to meet them and grab their tents (around 1pm)  we got to them and took the tents, security then tried to stop us and others who had gone out to get more beer etc from doing the same saying we had to que again from the back.

We said we didn't need to as we had already queued once to get in and that we had a pass out, security then got aggressive and said we had to stay and that we can't go back through as if people who were queing at the bottom saw us pushing past they wouldn't know or understand we had already been in and would get upset.

FFS. anyway suddenly there was a surge of people and we got swept along with everyone else as security tried to stop us and we got through....I just couldn't undeterstand it, security knew they could let us through but decided to make their own rules up?

Perhaps a seperate entrance/exit for epople re-entering on the wednesday would stop some of the confusion, the pushing and barging as people came back out with trolleys and wheelbarrows was silly as others were packed in like sardines trying to get into site.

[amfy]

Have also had an amazing weekend, and thought within a couple of hours of setting up how amazing it is that Glastonbury can make you forget this kind of pain!

We parked at 11.30 and didn't pitch till 2.45! That's 3 and a quarter hours on our feet getting our stuff in! I have never experienced such delays. At one point we were held for 45 minutes before being allowed to cross a road - no explanantion was given. Just awful - and I spoke to others who had it worse.

I am guessing that the peak arrival time shifting forward for the football had a massive impact and they didn't handle it as well as they could.

[SaintJimmy]

Parked up at 3am.  2 hours kip in the car with my spine bent all over the place as I was wedged up against the gear in the back.  Mate having a right good kip and snoring loudly so kept me and my other mate awake.

Got to the back of an already huge queue at about 5.45am.  Got into the site at 11.00am!!!!  But it was sunny and we had a good chat to various people we met in the queue.  

Two things:-

1)  Shurrup freakin moaning
2)  Shurrup freakin moaning

Fantastic festival and all I have read on here today is people grumbling!  Glasto is hard work sometimes but so worth it.  Get a box at Elton John if you want comfort and a minibar!!

That is all.

[amfy]

tbh - I always liken getting your stuff on (& off) site as being a bit like childbirth.

In the same way - the joy it brings makes you forget the pain.

[SaintJimmy]

amfy, on 29 June 2010 - 04:31 PM, said:

tbh - I always liken getting your stuff on (& off) site as being a bit like childbirth.

In the same way - the joy it brings makes you forget the pain.

Amen to that.  Lets face it.  The journey there, gettin in and tented up aint a barrel of laughs......but it is part of the experience.  

Lets get Mr Eavis to build a bleedin Holiday Inn at the top of The Park shall we?

[cdm22]

The queues on foot were effing ridiculous! We got into the car parks for around 11am but didn't get pitched til 3pm! The east car parks and pedestrian gate B were mental and there were a complete lack of any staff sorting it out!

amfy - was the 45 minute wait bit be in car park E3 perchance as the exact thing happened to us too?!

Yes it was going to be a busy time but surely directing all East car parks through 1 gate was a bit daft. All that was needed was a few people with walkie talkies directing some to other gates, not have queues of people crossing roads, and not have queues of people joining other queues of people further down. In other words another entrance would be good and would help crowding.

[scappaflow]

We were in East 5 and entered via gate C (I think this is the one at the bottom of the hill).

When really we should have entered via gate B.

Queued for ages from about 1pm onwards. Had to queue for ages between some trees and campervan area to cross a road, then had to queue at bottom of the hill to get across to the entry area.

I think it was more a case of so many people arriving before lunchtime (hoping to see the football) than any real problem with the organisation.

Also, a lot of people arriving early (far more than normal) traveling back and forth to the car park for additional stuff would have only made the problem even worse.

[WildChildRockChick]

SaintJimmy, on 29 June 2010 - 04:33 PM, said:

Amen to that.  Lets face it.  The journey there, gettin in and tented up aint a barrel of laughs......but it is part of the experience.  

Lets get Mr Eavis to build a bleedin Holiday Inn at the top of The Park shall we?

My mate spent 5 1/2 hours in the queue at PGB, with 2 kids.  She wasn't bothered for herself but she WAS worried about her children - rightly so as it turned out because the 5yo got heatstroke as a result, despite her best attempts.  that was an experience he could've lived without tbh

[frankie boy]

Do you realy think security want it to be as packed as that? No they want it to be over so they can have an easy time aswell. its because of the sheer amount of people what can they do about?

By the way thats not to the original poster Your story sounds silly on there part and your right I think a whole new gate is needed for reenterants..

[puppetmode]

West side wasn't much better. Took us 3 hours to get in.

More disappointing for us was the fact that the later filled carparks (arriving after 9am) were getting in far early than us at gate D as they were coming to the gate from a different direction. Priority should have been given to the earlier parkers as obviously those carparks would empty of festival goers.
My main concern was also for children. It seemed like there was no interest, or at least understanding of the huge suffering.

Its ok to say stop moaning but expressing concerns allows for things to improve in future.

I think it's a one off though due to the football. Most people trying to get in and set up from 8am to 3pm. No matter how many workers you throw at the gates, there's physically not enough space to process quickly. People coming in during late afternoon were sailing through. And lets face it, normally on Wednesday, that would have been peak time for entry.
And after all that effort.....the football was crap!!! I lasted til halftime on the Pyramid field and had to get in some shade and get some fluids.

[MIXFEST]

We were in the east camper van fields.
We arrived on Tuesday and had an early night.

With the excitement I was up at 6am so I thought I'd take a wander to PGC.
The queue was massive, I'm not sure were all the campers came from, and it extended right through the campervan fields.

At 8am they opened the car parks and another queue formed through E23.

We decided that it wouldn't be worth queuing until late afternoon, but surprisingly the queue cleared by 10 ish.
There was still a lot of campers coming through but they kept it clear.

[paulo999]

2-3 hours queueing on foot, vs 5-10 hours on the road.

From the little I've read so far, it sounds like - overall - it was better this year than last.

When so many people want to arrive at once, it's probably just a case of deciding where the best place is to put the problem. If they massively expanded the gate capacity, there'd be another problem on the internal tracks near the gate.

I get the feeling that there now might need to be a no-mans land around gates. But then to keep it orderly, you'd need pens. And people *hate* pens.

More tweaks to the system will be coming, I'd guess, but there's no silver bullet when everyone wants to be in so early.

[jezzer]

We parked up in E2 at 7.15am and didn't get on site until 1.15am, pitched tents by 3pm. The queueing system from that side was useless, it surely wouldn't have been too hard to process queues in order that car parks were filled. As far as I could see there was absolutely no point arriving early.  

We were just behind a couple who'd been there since 3am so obviously something went wrong with the whole system.

Anyway, the Wednesday morning's stresses were soon forgotten, all had a cracking time!  

[beards]

We arrived at 5am and were finally in just after 1pm. That first warm beer definitely went down smooth after being in such a horrendous queue

[misbehave1208]

We arrived at the carparks at 7am...half of our party arrived in E1, and spent 7 hours waiting to get in     Myself, my other half and our friend parked in W37 and got in no probs.

The people who were stuck in E1 had all our tents, etc....so my boyfriend went to take it all from them so we could set up camp, but security refused to let him back in  

This is our 5th year and we've never had any problems getting in. Fingers crossed the problem gets rectified before next year  

Once everyone was in and camp set up we all had the most amazing week....I have a serious case of the glasto blues today. Roll on next year  

[mkgirl1981]

we were in west 52 car park and as we were approaching the stewards were saying gate A didnt have a queue and gate D had a 2 hour wait
we wanted to camp in dairy ground so decided to carry on to gate D and if theres a queue we thought we'll just have a beer while we wait
when we got there, harldy any queue and get through in a bout 5 mins!
so i dunno what the stewards were going on about

seems like gate B had a lot of trouble, my friends went to the car park tues night, joined the queue at gate B at 7am and didnt get through for 5 hours

[treacle]

We were held in E2 for 3 hours before being allowed in to join the queue to get into the festival, then a further 2 hours in the actual queue to get on site.

It was incredibly frustrating watching people arriving in other car parks and joining the queue for gate B.

Our mate, llcoolphil phoned to tell us he had arrived (an hour and a half after us) and had been in and out fetching more gear 3 times before we we're through the gate for the first time.

[Lentus]

SaintJimmy, on 29 June 2010 - 04:25 PM, said:

Parked up at 3am.  2 hours kip in the car with my spine bent all over the place as I was wedged up against the gear in the back.  Mate having a right good kip and snoring loudly so kept me and my other mate awake.

Got to the back of an already huge queue at about 5.45am.  Got into the site at 11.00am!!!!  But it was sunny and we had a good chat to various people we met in the queue.  

Two things:-

1)  Shurrup freakin moaning
2)  Shurrup freakin moaning

Fantastic festival and all I have read on here today is people grumbling!  Glasto is hard work sometimes but so worth it.  Get a box at Elton John if you want comfort and a minibar!!

That is all.

I left bath (bout 45 mins drive) at 8:45, with all the queuing at gate B we managed to get the tent up by 2:30. Thats a big wait and yeah, it was hard but....I would do it again, and again, and again, and again for that weekend. Seems like there are a lot of people on here who just want to moan about things. DO ONE!!! Talk about things you enjoyed and stop dwelling on the slightly uncomfortable moments you did enjoy.

[EasyUserName]

jezzer, on 29 June 2010 - 05:52 PM, said:

We parked up in E2 at 7.15am and didn't get on site until 1.15am, pitched tents by 3pm. The queueing system from that side was useless, it surely wouldn't have been too hard to process queues in order that car parks were filled. As far as I could see there was absolutely no point arriving early.  

We were just behind a couple who'd been there since 3am so obviously something went wrong with the whole system.

Anyway, the Wednesday morning's stresses were soon forgotten, all had a cracking time!  

How weird for you guys!

I don't know what time I arrived on site, around 0630 I guess.  I was put in East 10 - not well pleased at the time, I can tell you, since I already knew from this forum that some of the 9pm Tue arrivals had been put in East 2, right by the gate.

After a bloody long walk from East 10 to the PGB, I arrived in the line at exactly 0715 - where it was starting to join East 2.  However, the line was building up fast, and by 0800 was around the corner of this fence behind me.  Guess you must have been there someplace.

But, not wanting to make you feel worse, I was in Kidney Mead and tent up by 0900-ish.  They must have stopped the line not long after us.

I think that the entry this year was very much down to luck in most cases.  I thought that being sent to East 10 was a pain, but it turned out to be really good!  Meant that we left site really quick (after the nearly hour long walk back to the car in the blazing sun mind!)


If, as a poster has already said, getting into the festival isn't too far off child-birth, all I can say is I am glad I am a man.  

[1000yardstare]

We arrived at site at about half 7am. Directed to a ridiculous queue near W50, over a main road. Was intending to camp in Dairy Ground so needed gate D. people outside of the rope barrier were just walking up the path so we joined them. When we got to security they said if you want gate A go left (and towards gate A which had no queue) but back in queue for gate D. So we went through gate A and walked right the way across the site in less than an hour. Compared to the 3 hour queue we did ok. I just dont understand why there were no stewards or security explaining the ability to walk straight in to gate A??