Gate B madness last year

[Stu H]

Anyone else stuck in the madness at Gate B last year, early Wednesday?

What started as a nice snaked queue around the trees soon became a huge swell of people, with hundreds not bothering to stay in line and all trying to cram into the one small opening. It was horrible, sweaty, hot and often so packed people couldn't get their bags off their backs. We were stood with 20kgs on our backs and nowhere to get comfortable while it got sorted out.

It took a couple of hours for the stewards to manage it properly - and it could have been avoided. I've never experienced anything like that at Gate C, which is a fairly simple procession of people until you get to the hill of doom, when it gets a bit more chaotic, but still more than bearable.

Hope they manage Gate B better this year, it was borderline dangerous last year - especially with little water (I won't be making that mistake again!) 

[EasyUserName]

They had a rope path at Gate C to stop it getting too large (the line).

[cb4747]

wow gosh that doesn't sound like fun. I glided in late afternoon on the Thursday with no problems. Hopefully they will manage the queue a bit better!

[Stu H]

2 minutes ago, EasyUserName said:

They had a rope path at Gate C to stop it getting too large (the line).

That's all it would have needed at B - people would have stayed in a line and not just all joined a swelling throng of people. If in a controlled queue, people can manage their backpacks a lot better when it stops moving. It started as that at 6am, but by 7:30/8am when it started to move, it took 5 minutes to descend into chaos.

[johnomatic]

I was Gate A on Wednesday morning last year, and though there were the usual idiots pushing in there was nothing on the scale that it sounds like there was at B. 

[Nobody Interesting]

Gate A was not much better. A random queue until the zig zag roped off bit and loads coming over from gate D due to the non arrival of stewards there or something.

[Stu H]

I'm taking my tent, a few beers/water, sun-cream and just getting into the site and set up. I'll go back for the rest of the stuff later in the day, no way I'm going through that experience again. It's amazing how even after 6 of these, I'm still learning how to experience it a little more comfortably! 

[pentura]

17 minutes ago, EasyUserName said:

They had a rope path at Gate C to stop it getting too large (the line).

Oh god I remember that, as soon as 8am hit any sort of order was completely lost. People just ducked under the ropes and it became absolute chaos. Several thousand people at a standstill coupled with the fact that most (myself included) were there from the previous night and the fact it was about 25 degrees made that trek absolute hell

[Nobody Interesting]

1 minute ago, pentura said:

Oh god I remember that, as soon as 8am hit any sort of order was completely lost. People just ducked under the ropes and it became absolute chaos. 

That good old Glastonbury spirit!

Lost it seems.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Nobody Interesting

[elias]

Yep, all semblance of good manners seems to go out of the window once the gates open. I was at Gate B in 2010 and people were ignoring the queue entirely. It took over 2 1/2 hours to get to the gate and it was scorching hot. The first beer has never tasted so good.

I turn up on Wednesday afternoon these days and walk straight in. 

[justperfect]

I presume that getting there at stupid o'clock on the wendsday morning and having to put up with hours of queues and uncomfortable crowd crushing is all to be in the so called "best" campsites.

Is it really worth it?

We breeze in either late wendsday or early Thursday. No messing, no pushing or shoving. Glide through the gate, always have a bit of friendly banter with whoever is attaching my wristband. Still plenty of room to pitch without being literally on top of our neighbours. Still there early enough to have a wander and see what's new before everything kicks off properly.

  It's all smiles and a million miles away from the nightmare scenes the poster has encountered.

 

I'm probably just getting old

[Cieran]

Anyone at gate D? I was wrist banding that morning and I heard very similar stories. Think I remember something about a fence falling down and loads of people being able to skip the queue? This is all what I heard from people coming in

[fatyeti24]

the most amazing thing about this is that it won't deter thousands from arriving early and queueing for hours.  these stories happen every year.  i'm sure people have their reasons but it sounds insane to me.

[pentura]

7 minutes ago, fatyeti24 said:

the most amazing thing about this is that it won't deter thousands from arriving early and queueing for hours.  these stories happen every year.  i'm sure people have their reasons but it sounds insane to me.

It was and is madness! We did it last year to get a 'prime' location because there's a large group of us but really we didn't need to do that. Got there at midnight if I remember rightly and got in and all pitched by about 10:30 Wednesday morning.

So about 10 hours of queuing / drinking. The atmosphere was good in the queues all through the night though, some people really got the party started then

[Padgey]

My annoyance with Gate B the last couple of years is why do they have the walkway blocked off down by the fence, they have only done this the last couple of years and it seems for no apparent reason.

[mungo57]

I remember PGB from 2011. Never again will I enter the festival through that gate. Seemed to be no marshalling of the queue whatsoever and everyone just shoved in once the stewards opened the entrance. Me and the GF were in the queue from about 4am and didn't get into the Dairy Field until gone 11.

[shuttlep]

18 minutes ago, Cieran said:

Anyone at gate D? I was wrist banding that morning and I heard very similar stories. Think I remember something about a fence falling down and loads of people being able to skip the queue? This is all what I heard from people coming in

a fence did fall down, and everyone was re directed to another gate. 30 minutes later they fixed the problem and re opened the gate. just as I turned up and walked straight in no queuing 

[Thunderstruck]

I don't understand why people turn up early to queue. I'd much rather rock up in the afternoon, stroll through the gate and set up camp in a less busy area of the site!

[Cieran]

15 minutes ago, shuttlep said:

a fence did fall down, and everyone was re directed to another gate. 30 minutes later they fixed the problem and re opened the gate. just as I turned up and walked straight in no queuing

Oh damn, I didn't hear about people getting redirected, Wow, that would be awful!

[I feel like Pablo]

1 hour ago, Stu H said:

Anyone else stuck in the madness at Gate B last year, early Wednesday?

What started as a nice snaked queue around the trees soon became a huge swell of people, with hundreds not bothering to stay in line and all trying to cram into the one small opening. It was horrible, sweaty, hot and often so packed people couldn't get their bags off their backs. We were stood with 20kgs on our backs and nowhere to get comfortable while it got sorted out.

It took a couple of hours for the stewards to manage it properly - and it could have been avoided. I've never experienced anything like that at Gate C, which is a fairly simple procession of people until you get to the hill of doom, when it gets a bit more chaotic, but still more than bearable.

Hope they manage Gate B better this year, it was borderline dangerous last year - especially with little water (I won't be making that mistake again!) 

this was really frightening, was at gate D queueing the other side of the bushes that lead up the hill and suddenly all festival goers from further up rushed the queue and stampeded down the field blocking everybody in. complete chaos and NO stewards to help. 

even worse, at the top where you normally queue like cattle in between metal barriers We arrived last year to find rope instead of barriers and everybody OBVIOUSLY just ducked under the rope creating a dangerous situation where everybody was crushed in a bottle neck in the field with absolutely ZERO stewards. who can we contact to ensure this doesn't happen again? I'm frightened of using gate D again despite using it for the last 3 years and don't know enough about gate C to risk it. 

[Miesh]

Not enjoying reading this thread.  The last time I went was 2010, we arrived at gate A at 6.30 am, joined a well behaved, short queue and were through the gates well before 9am.

I've gathered from other threads that early mornings are busier nowadays.   We'd rather drive through the night to aviod traffic.   We'll be heading to gate B this year, for Cockmill family camping.  I've read that fills up quickly.  Does anyone think that waiting in the car for the initial queue to die down will work for us?  I'd just decided to buy a trolley to do it in one trip, now I'm thinking that tents plus essentials first might be better.  We're setting up for friends with kids arriving later and I've been having recurring dreams of it all going wrong for months.

[Charm]

10 minutes ago, I feel like Pablo said:

this was really frightening, was at gate D queueing the other side of the bushes that lead up the hill and suddenly all festival goers from further up rushed the queue and stampeded down the field blocking everybody in. complete chaos and NO stewards to help. 

even worse, at the top where you normally queue like cattle in between metal barriers We arrived last year to find rope instead of barriers and everybody OBVIOUSLY just ducked under the rope creating a dangerous situation where everybody was crushed in a bottle neck in the field with absolutely ZERO stewards. who can we contact to ensure this doesn't happen again? I'm frightened of using gate D again despite using it for the last 3 years and don't know enough about gate C to risk it. 

Wow that sounds so scary. I heard about the ropes but assumed it must be a rumour, how could anyone do something that stupid. We were held back for ages until it was fixed, surprisingly we managed to be pitched up by 10:30 but the queue behind us was unbelievably massive, can't imagine what time they got in. 
Charm x

 

[jonny2mad]

Who was managing the stewarding if it was oxfarm I'm not sure as I work inside the festival not on gates, you could contact them tell them what happened and suggest how it should be sorted out if you have suggestions

[jonny2mad]

And I have got people who queue jumped in the SE corner to go back to where they originally were just by guilt tripping them,  "that's not how we behave in Glastonbury ". your a bloody wonderful crowd to manage if approached in the right way no other festival would you be able to get people to act so well.

[Waapster]

2 hours ago, Stu H said:

I'm taking my tent, a few beers/water, sun-cream and just getting into the site and set up. I'll go back for the rest of the stuff later in the day, no way I'm going through that experience again. It's amazing how even after 6 of these, I'm still learning how to experience it a little more comfortably! 

That's exactly what I'm doing. The way the back half of the queue simply walked to the front of gate B was shocking. I want to be a little more nimble this year so I'm taking a trolley with the tent, a few beers and nothing else. Set up, crack a can or two then stroll back with the trolley to get the rest of the stuff.