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Lack of facilities and end of Gate D hell


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Just now, stuartbert two hats said:

More likely to be that than the people.  But you know that :P 

So how?

I used it for years. I got caught there one year on the sun, and probably moaned about it here.

Nowadays I go in via gate c, and apart from never bothering to join the queue nowadays until there's no queue, the queues and times spent queuing don't look different to how they ever did at gate D.

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I don't think its the people at gate D, how can it be?   Sorry if its sense of humour failure on my part after  a shit day at work but theres nothing to suggest a different demograogic at gate D. Surely! 

I only used gate A once before and got caught in a 6 hour queue there in the pissing rain.  The thing i do notice about D is that they often change the layout of the queuing system.  That suggests to me that they are never happy about how it works, but then ive little knowledge if the other gates are changed too. It always seems stuck out on a limb too, no roads or facilities nearby, does that have an impact on the number of stewards there? Are the stewards unable to get rest and food adequately? Does that affect the effectiveness of the gate? I dunno, im just a happy punter no expert on event management!  I hear reports of fire engines spraying people with water.. Did that happen at D? 

Anyway whatever, I'll continue to use D, continue to be as prepared as possible for the weather and continue to help those around if I can. 

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6 hours ago, Tommy101 said:

Yeah, there is a few tales here of casualties being ditched by their group. It doesn't sit well with me. Me and my lot get as wasted as the next lot but you never leave a friend behind, especially if because they've got themselves in a state. 

I guess thats how we find our true friends. I may be presumptious but i'm guessing some of the casualties are younger and still sorting the wheat from the chaff so to speak. Never leave a person in need, friend or stranger. Think it's called compassion. And it's damn good for the nice kind of Karma.:D

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On 19/07/2017 at 7:56 AM, Zoo Music Girl said:

We came into gate A about 2 or 3 on the Wednesday when it was absolutely blazing hot. To be fair to the organisers they were giving out free bottles of water to everyone and misting people down with a big hose. Got us in bloody quickly too. So maybe arriving later was the way forward this year (unless you're one of their Pennards or bust types).

Shhh. It's a reasonably well kept secret that the queues have almost disappeared from about 1pm or so. My last 4 trips to Glastonbury I have arrived around 2  and more or less walked straight in. 

The midday heat was a problem this year as me and my son who I went with both suffered from heat exhaustion, and my son actually passed out on the tent while putting it up. 

Thankfully organised Mum had packed rehydration sachets and lovely friends gave us water and shelter.

But Wednesday evening was wonderful- never been out until after midnight in just a t shirt at Glastonbury.

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4 hours ago, bexj said:

I don't think its the people at gate D, how can it be?   Sorry if its sense of humour failure on my part after  a shit day at work but theres nothing to suggest a different demograogic at gate D. Surely! 

I only used gate A once before and got caught in a 6 hour queue there in the pissing rain.  The thing i do notice about D is that they often change the layout of the queuing system.  That suggests to me that they are never happy about how it works, but then ive little knowledge if the other gates are changed too. No idea of the thinking behind different layouts. We (Oxfam stewards) just have to get on with what we have. It always seems stuck out on a limb too, no roads or facilities nearby, does that have an impact on the number of stewards there? Shouldn't imagine so. A decision is made as to how many stewards/security/wristbanders/traffic etc are needed and the companies who supply them supply as many as needed. It is a ball ache to get to for Oxfam and Feststaff cos we camp outside Gate B but I don't know whether that factors into the number of no-shows. If it does there are response stewards to fill any gaps. Don't know about any other shifts but mine were all fully staffed with zero no-shows. First time I've ever seen that. Are the stewards unable to get rest and food adequately? You can rest as well as anywhere, just find a quiet bit of shade and sit down. And we made sure to rotate stewards around so they got a job under shade every now and then. The lack of food options is annoying, but you just have to make sure you take stuff with you. Security  are provided with packed lunches while they are working. By all accounts they are pretty shit. (the lunches, not security. Most of them were pretty good)Does that affect the effectiveness of the gate? Generally I'd like to think not, but remember on days like Wednesday, we are just as hot, thirsty and knackered as you lot are. And we are there for 8 hours at a time. I worked the afternoon/evening on Wednesday and fuck me it was brutal. I dunno, im just a happy punter no expert on event management!  I hear reports of fire engines spraying people with water.. Did that happen at D? 

Anyway whatever, I'll continue to use D, continue to be as prepared as possible for the weather and continue to help those around if I can. 

And to the people who are talking about casualties being ditched by their their 'mates', probably 90% of welfare cases I've dealt with at Glastonbury and other festivals wouldn't have been welfare cases if their mates had taken better care of them

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18 minutes ago, philipsteak said:

And to the people who are talking about casualties being ditched by their their 'mates', probably 90% of welfare cases I've dealt with at Glastonbury and other festivals wouldn't have been welfare cases if their mates had taken better care of them

That's really fucking sad. I had a bit of a close call in my early days of erm raves. My friends totally knew what to do and looked after me. I think back occasionally and wonder if it was the difference between life and death sometimes due to the quality of the people i hung out with. 

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23 minutes ago, H.M.V said:

That's really fucking sad. I had a bit of a close call in my early days of erm raves. My friends totally knew what to do and looked after me. I think back occasionally and wonder if it was the difference between life and death sometimes due to the quality of the people i hung out with. 

It is sad. The only slight defence you could give is that sometimes the mates were almost as fucked as the casualty, and so weren't really in a position to help much

I've also seen the flip side of that often enough with the concern people have shown for complete strangers. Including me after a night shift followed by a couple of hours sleep, breakfast,  and then going to watch a band. I basically gave up and ended up slumped against one of the marquee  poles sort of dozing. The number of people who came to check up on me was lovely and heart warming and reassuring but also bloody annoying!

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On 22/07/2017 at 9:05 AM, eFestivals said:

In all seriousness, I think the moans here about (only) gate D is possibly because it's the gate that the largest proportion of people who post here use compared to other gates.

I agree with this. Plus...

I've queued at Gate A and Gate D in the past, and for the last few years worked Gate D as an Oxfam steward. Some other factors which I think may affect the queuing experience of the two gates are;

Gate A is more or less just off the road. Gate D requires a fair uphill yomp from the car parks to get to the gate, (but potentially a shorter walk to then get to your chosen field). It includes a few false summits, increasing the mental as well as the physical fatigue!

Gate A queue has almost all the train/coach people. Their loads are smaller by necessity. Gate D I saw preposterous load-carrying that could only have come from a car park.

As others have said, the longish walk from car parks up to Gate D is not stewarded. This probably needs looked at. Any water given out on this route would've been only after the long march.

For many hours at Gate D there was only one entrance open, and every bag was searched. The queue moved like a snail at this time. Later they opened more entrances and moved to a more random bag search. They then swapped back as the queue disappeared, only to swap again as the queue got huge again. This rather strange reactionary response always seemed to be done with too much time lag. It did mean that depending on what time you joined the back of the queue, your wait in the sun could be quire short or very long.Gate D also used the zigzag lanes, but then changed to a straight path in, then back again, don't ask why.

When they made these various changes, the effect on the queue was a bit like traffic jams on a motorway i.e. those at the front of the queue when something happened had a few mins of extra waiting whilst a gate was opened or closed and security set up a few tables for bag searching, but for those much further back the ripple effect through thousands of people was significant.

But yeah, same sun same conditions for all I guess, just trying to think of reasons why Gate D 'seemed' worse.

 

 

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I've grumbled about gate B a lot in the past - not had the joy in the last two years.  I think my grumbles have been outweighed by volume of grumbles for gate D (as suggested, more people use it).

Problems I've experienced at B have often been largely due to late-arrivals joining the queue at different points, and things can spiral out of control with (almost certain) lack of supervision.  It can flip things from you arriving at whatever time and being in an established queue, to that queue grinding to a halt as other newer sections of arrivals get preference at pinch points or whatever.  Nothing sinister or logical, just people aiming for what they can see.  Most of the festival site's parking seems to be on the West, so I can imagine most people experiencing problems are over there, not complicated.  

Without great knowledge of the area around D I can see that there are way more potential spots (in comparison to B ) where you could get stuck in one queue that suddenly becomes defunct due to later arrivals doing their own thing, arriving from different directions due to new parking fields opening maybe.  I can see addition of a second 'alton-towers' style queue, complained about above, may actually help alleviate the issue I'm describing, but presumably adds other issues as suggested by @fewcloudy

Gate C is obviously different - probably one of the most used entrances but there's only really one way of marching through the campervan fields, so everyone's likely to end up in the same ordered queue - and a huge population of people coming from campervans who a ) don't need (/want) to bring in a massive load of stuff and b ) can look out their window and decide bugger that, I'll sit outside with a beer for a bit.

As for lack of services after getting through the gate - most people don't spend much time there.  You could probably make a killing on Wednesday morning, but not exactly a spot I can see vendors lining up for.  Once people are done getting their stuff through the gate I can't imagine there's much foot-fall at all.  If there's more services going to be put there then the festival would probably need to offer a pretty decent contract.

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