Jump to content

Would you like the festival to be smaller?


Skoo
 Share

Recommended Posts

This year seemed worse purely because of the mud. They don't need to decrease capacity at all, just sort out the bottleneck areas and perhaps rearrange the naughty corner and also promote other areas more for late night entertainment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 50
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

I do wonder what a festival with 25,000 fewer tickets (and correspondingly smaller headliners, one fewer SE corner area, one less Silver Hayes stage and maybe a smaller JP/WG hybrid) would be like. It would be a nightmare if you didn't get a ticket, but maybe a nicer experience? 

I think that the festival did brilliantly well to cope under incredibly difficult conditions this year, but it did seem as if the weather pushed the site and infrastructure to breaking point. Maybe Longleat would have been an experiment in a smaller Glastonbury?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As people have said, the SE Corner gets too much publicity and is accordingly always rammed.  I haven't been there for a good few years now - happy to spend time around Williams Green, Spaceport, Glade, Bread and Roses, Blues, Pussy Parlure, etc.  Plenty going on without the stress of the crushes.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Larraht said:

I agree. I don't mind crowds as such...occasionally at Glastonbury I feel a little overwhelmed and I tend to enjoy Green fields/theatre and circus areas the most as they are a bit more chilled. Saying that I would not want it smaller. Hard enough to get tickets as it is! Late night areas need sorting - move common and block 9...silver hayes seemed rather sparse this year, wonder if there is space there or if the sound bleed would be too much. Offer late night options all over site rather than concentrated in one area. Saying that we went shangri-la Sunday after the headliners and it seemed fairly quiet in there...but as we left around 1pm signs everywhere said it was closed as it was full?

Thing is I don't think you could move anything to Silver Hayes as that's normally very busy (I've heard it wasn't particularly busy this year but that was likely due to the conditions there). 

I'm wondering if a little more space could be freed up where the John Peel tent used to be and sticking an area from SE there? 

Then again you would have thought that moving areas from SE would have crossed their mind and maybe it isn't really possible. Moving an entire area would likely impact on camping space, and I wouldn't want to camp in the area that was freed up, if that was the option!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Agree that in 2007, the mud was much wetter and more soupy, so I suppose that will have made a difference, with people not feeling the need to stick to the paths, so perhaps it really is simply the conditions this year.

I do still believe Arcadia wants' scrapping or moving up to the north of the site, and the SE Corner re-jigging or just scaling down.

 

 

Edited by Skoo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Nickyboy said:

As people have said, the SE Corner gets too much publicity and is accordingly always rammed.  I haven't been there for a good few years now - happy to spend time around Williams Green, Spaceport, Glade, Bread and Roses, Blues, Pussy Parlure, etc.  Plenty going on without the stress of the crushes.

 

This is my plan for next time, just simply avoid the SE corner and stick to my old favourite haunts. I just have such terrible FOMO that I end up trying for it, only to freak out about the crowds. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The south east corner is what it is because there are only a handful of residents that live on the boarders of the site there, they all make pretty substantial amounts of money from the festival and so have an informal agreement with the Eavis' not to complain about the noise or object to licence outing the late night entertainment in that area. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No need to reduce numbers or the size.  This year I'm sure the mud reduced the visits by many to outlying areas, concentrating people in the central areas and making them more crowded.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes I am officially retracting my statement about reducing numbers - as people have said, the mud was like half dry cement at times, and this is what led to my perception of things being way more crowded than previously.

Edited to add: I still think Arcadia and SE Corner needs a rethink, but I think most of us seem to agree on that!

 

 

 

Edited by Skoo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

SE corner was never that bad for me. Admittedly I went twice. 

Friday night at around 4am, it was dead.

Saturday night before the headliners. I was struck by how quiet it was though.

The serious problem I had was trying to get to the Silver Hayes from the Other stage after underworld. That was murder. Im 6ft 3 and reletively fit, but I thought it wasn't worth it. I saw 2 panic attacks and we decided to sack it off.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, eFestivals said:

why not just title the thread "would you like to go to Glastonbury less often by making tickets harder to get?" :D

id be happy to only be allowed to go every other year if it meant i could fully enjoy myself while i was there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Naughty corner wasn't there in  2007, it was just Los Vaguness.

Wouldn't apologies for your original post @Skoo - I feel similarly and have a bit of internal conflict about it.. It's worse now than I remember it being in 2000 to be honest. I like the edge the SE corner brings, but getting there is nightmare. I would happily go back to 'how it was' but it isn't going to happen.

Edited by Yokel Again
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No smaller for me thanks, big is beautiful. I've been going for 30 yearsish so I've seen it in its infancy and watched it grow and bloom.

It's crowded in some areas for a reason, the Pyramid is a huge venue arena and for people to say it's ridiculously busy at times, er wtf!? That's the point of it! Some people shouldn't bother with festivals if they're bothered about crowds.

As for the SE corner, yep as with most of the site is does suffer congestion more than other areas, even more so when the weathers bad but that's an issue GF will hopefully deal with very soon. I think that area needs to be broken up and spread about the site, volume issues obviously exist but something has to be done.

Having said I'm happy with the size, I don't think I'd be over the moon to see it get any bigger. Maybe it's an age thing but some areas this year I just didn't get too whereas every year before I have.

Is there actually anyone that would want it even bigger?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, glastonbagel said:

It's manic now even compared to 2008 when I first went. I've enjoyed it less and less each time - Could just be me getting older mind.

Honestly not as crowded as 99 and 2000, but I'm feeling the same each year now, but again I expect that's just me.  I've become one of the people who hangs back at gigs because I struggle more with crowds each year.  

One of the problems is that when something is a novelty at Glastonbury it seems everyone goes, so I try to avoid those things rather than face the worst of the crowding.  We wandered up to the Stonebridge bar as part of a bar crawl on Thursday, arriving before Steve Davis...it was getting so rammed I bugged out to the stone circle for some more chilled space.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Spindles said:

Honestly not as crowded as 99 and 2000, but I'm feeling the same each year now, but again I expect that's just me.  I've become one of the people who hangs back at gigs because I struggle more with crowds each year.  

One of the problems is that when something is a novelty at Glastonbury it seems everyone goes, so I try to avoid those things rather than face the worst of the crowding.  We wandered up to the Stonebridge bar as part of a bar crawl on Thursday, arriving before Steve Davis...it was getting so rammed I bugged out to the stone circle for some more chilled space.

It's funny, even as a young whippersnapper, I would go right into the middle of a crowd, but secretly not enjoy it - but thought it was the done thing. Now I'm older, I prefer to hang back a bit. No issues with crowds - obviously if you're watching a headline act, you're going to be surrounded by thousands of people! It's just when I am literally rammed right up against the people around me with no ability to move arms etc that I start to feel uncomfortable, and this year, that feeling definitely crept in more than previous years - however as already discussed, seems to be down to conditions, although that new fence by the Pyramid stage and that bloody ice cream van seemed to be responsible for some of it in that area at least!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...