Old_Johno

They said they’d raised £1.3 when they sent out the ‘competition is closed’ email. I haven’t officially seen the winners are announced, just people posting they win.

Apparently the Oxfam, the British Red Cross and War Child draw emails have all gone out today. They raised £1.3million, so even without postal entries the odds weren't looking good.

I’d spend the entire weekend feeling incredibly anxious if I’d snuck in. I’m 6’7 so taller than 99% of the population so would have to be a stealth option rather than anything where I’d get seen by security. If I was desperate, say daft punk decided to get back together for a one off headline slot then I have a friend of a friend who could get me in the back of a van probably, or wateraid are always running short on volunteers for cleaning the toilets

There’s a few decent things on there, unfortunately (much like every festival) not many big names, even compared to the last few years. ‘but we dont go for the music’ I hear you cry, which is fine, but last year all the micro venues were rammed you used to be able to pitch up at the start time but now its get there an hour in advance much harder to bumble around, house party had crushes to get in on the Friday which is where I guess Hot Cakes Takeover will be, huge queues to get into the enchanted woodlands after dark. You need big names because you need the majority of punters to be at the main stage where the room is. I couldn’t even pick the obvious headliners out of the lineup. Maybe Henge for Friday night? Bob Vylann Sunday evening after closing ceremony. I love shambala but this year there’s a lot of changes without Kaleida coming in, and the new site layouts, although maybe its just me I’ve been enjoying it less and less the last few years. Might be a good thing and attract fewer people who just wanna get High as possible and dont appreciate the vibe.

Another problem with the ‘bucket list’ crowd. No festival experience or etiquette.

Has anyone ever suggested a solution to crowd crust? other than broadcasting a message to let people filter through the crowd I can’t imagine you’d ever get anyone to pay attention once they’ve claimed ‘their’ spot

Everyone will moan about people complaining the line up is weak but then moan all their favourite small venues are rammed. You need massive headliners because the pyramid stage is the biggest area, and that’s where you want the majority of people to be most of the day. It’s not a taste or music snobbery thing, it’s logistics. reference: the million threads on here about overcrowding

I did find the daytime to be a lot quieter than previous years, then had to queue for everything after MainStage finished, will see how this year goes but wasn’t as wholesome feeling in general, could have been the crap weather. Didn’t have a bad time, just think it might have peaked for me, will see what the replace ChaiWallas with

I missed tier 1 last year as I spent extra time adding my car pass and a pay it forward donation. I just added our two tickets and paid for them before going back to do the rest in a second transaction.

It’s *not exclusively for Glastonbury tickets, they have one prize draw a week for all of the prizes on their website there is one winner, that wins the prize they entered against They’ve done some maths and entries are from 50p to £5 a ticket depending on what prize you’re entering for. They just have to hope that whoever wins (on average) was someone who entered one of the lower value prize draws and they’re quids in. All of the entries on average will add up to somewhere near the value of the top prize like a Ferrari or something.

They’re competitions are legit, I know someone that won a car through them before. I don’t really understand their prize structure, you pay an entry price based on the value of the prize and I guess they average it out across the prize values against the number of entries. I’m more surprised their offering tickets this early on, guess they could always fall back on the cash offer

First competition of the year announced early by botb https://www.botb.com/prizes/lifestyle/win-glastonbury-tickets Bit early to be claiming hospitality tickets

Boomtown let you take your own alcohol everywhere with you, although you’re only ‘allowed’ 16 cans per person. Ive never seen anyone get theirs confiscated on entry, supposedly it does happen.

Can’t believe it’s as high as 20,000 break ins, the scale of the parking alone would be massive. Trains are already rammed full, and anywhere within walking distance would have parking restrictions. Everywhere feels busier because large chunks of the festival are empty, and everyone’s watching the same few acts, will only get worse as the price of bands and artists increases and they can afford fewer big clashes.

If I got the coach instead of driving I don’t get a 6 day refund on my insurance or vehicle tax though, those are fixed costs of car ownership that I need for work/ life in general. the wear and tear costs can be calculated at a per mile rate but are still significantly cheaper than the coach.

Ok, you got me, add in £10 for a car wash.

Car hire place near me does car hire for £17 a day. So even paying for that, and fuel and parking pass it’s still £40 cheaper than getting the coach if you get 4 people in. Plus the whole cost of owning a car is irrelevant as this is a one off journey, you could use that argument if it was a regular commute and you were comparing it to a train season ticket, but the odds are one of a group of 4 will have a car they use anyway so everyone can just Chuck in a 10er for tyre wear if you wanna be that fussy.

I watched a video on what causes crowd crushes after I got back and it was like a tick list of everything that went wrong Friday night, small entrance, uncontrolled queue, no comms, no one managing anything, late to open, limited capacity, and then they started a skillz on time and the shoving got worse.

There’s numerous people in here pointing out that the coaches are double or triple the cost of driving with a full car because the coaches are so expensive. Parking permits could be £100+ and people would still pay it. Seeing as transport of punters is the biggest source of emissions if they can’t get more coaches they can pay for carbon capture somewhere else.

You have to take into account that a campervan doesn’t pay for parking so it’s only £140 more than a parking pass. Which isn’t bad for a glamping option. Although if you’re then hiring a camper ontop of that it’s going to be close to £1500 by the time you’ve paid a Glastonbury premium for a small 2 berth van. I still maintain the parking passes should be more expensive than they are and used to reduce the cost of coach travel, carrot and stick. As others have pointed out unless you’re a solo traveller those prices aren’t cheaper, and limit your luggage/ amount of alcohol you can bring. Double loss. £360 is beyond the reach of a lot of people now, which die hards will say is achievable by anyone who wants to go enough, but when 20% of the country is living in poverty that’s a bit rich.

I think this is a good summary, I feel like they need an etiquette guide, or some kind of ‘no trolleys, chairs or other hazard beyond this point’ You can have a great festival with kids but it’s not the same festival you had when you were 18, and loads of people don’t seem to want to accept that.

The amount of fuss people make on here about chairs, flags, picnic blankets and other minor inconveniences you’d think transporting a 1ft human in a 8ft wagon would be considered selfish, but apparently that’s where the line is.

Having just got back from a lovely Shambala, can we have a discussion about child wagons? I know anything related to parenting gets peoples hackles up (don’t get me started on kids not wearing hearing protection) but I’m genuinely curious to see what people think about it. There used to be the odd one, maybe a few prams, but generally children were carried or free range, but now it seems everyone has an 8ft long metal charriot for moving their little ones around in. Some people even went so far as to ‘wall off’ a section of the main stage crowd to defend their picnic blankets, during Saturday nights headliners. It was like a scene out of an old western movie where they made a wagon circle to fight off some rival gang. I love seeing kids having a good time at festivals, and I don’t want this to be an anti child rant, but perhaps it’s time for a bit of an étiqueté guide or a max size? No wagons past a certain point? Even fairy lights as a minimum would be a good start to stop people walking into abandoned black metal boxy ones in the middle of the night.

Absolutely smashed it, barring the crush to get into house party on Friday night when they stupidly decided not to open the door until 5 minutes before A.Skillz was on, had a genuine moment of panic in the crowd and I’m tall enough to see what’s going on! Must have been a few thousand people trying to get through one tiny door. Shambolympics was amazing as always, so much fun in all the tiny venues, even had time to do some yoga and Salsa! Also this is double encrypted so Boomtown don’t actually get your number plate info, it just checks it against a list of scrambled number plates that are in its system as paid, and makes it a lot quicker.

Had to join the local library to print off your car park pass, Boomtown did an ANPR system which seemed to work pretty well, wonder if they will ditch the paper passes next year.