Old_Johno

So many people complaining on Facebook and Instagram that they haven’t been able to buy parking passes this year, despite increasing the amount of public transport tickets. Have they genuinely sold the same amount? 3 out of our group of 20 didn’t buy one (which is their own fault I guess). Going to be carnage on the roads trying to turn everyone away from the car parks when the nearest proper town is 10 miles away.

In the day time always worth check the out the shambolympics, winners get free tickets to next year so they all take it seriously. It’s like a school sports day, if all the events were dreamt up by someone incredibly high. Funny to watch families trying to compete with high as balls 30 year olds in things like the paddling pool high dive.

I’m mostly interested in the 22/23 differences, didn’t go because of the eye watering price tag, and their questionable moral greenwashing bullshittery. Have heard from a few people the story was more accessible and better organised than last year

My mortgage renewal offer has come through for January, going to be losing £400 a month to the interest increases, my disposable income has basically been wiped out. I can’t see tickets being below £350 so for 2 of us with parking, travel and spending money it quickly becomes a lot more of a sacrifice. Combined with how busy it feels now, constant queues and crowds, maybe not. Will still probably get caught up in the ticket hype though

Aside from the headliners, Swingamajig usually has really fun stuff going on, town of cats on Saturday night are mint, but they’re clashing with Dutty moonshine. I don’t know many other bands so I usually just bumble around

I particularly enjoyed that they put this after saying how expensive festivals are to attend a couple of paragraphs above. 2 cans a day is breakfast Have never seen them enforce is but I will still be hiding some around my packing.

The general showers are free! The spas have a donation for a shower there, I think it is £4 for an open air shower.

I’ve been Beta testing this years app, and the campsites have all changed slightly, but from what I can tell the only real change is they’ve swapped pre-pitched camping over to the North east boundary of pink, and increased the size of the accessible camping. Looks like there’s currently no ‘quiet camping’ other than family. We got there at midday last year and family camping was probably 75% full, but everywhere else was 75% empty. Didn’t really fill up in pink and green until about 3 or 4pm. The stewards should do a better job of pushing people out further rather than cramming in.

Having an attitude of ‘if you don’t like it find another festival’ is a bold statement when you’ve still got tickets for sale the day before the event. Will see how it goes this year if they’ve improved or not

For sure! My fave last year was some people who made a group outfit fruit machine and they span around and gave out sweets! All of my good ideas involve copious amounts of cardboard and I can’t be bothered to lug that around again.

I suspect this year there will be about 5000 people wearing lampshades as hats for the furniture theme

Yeah Saturday is the parade day, for the furniture theme. They messed up the start of the parade last year and left half the people behind. Dont know if I’ll bother making an outfit for it this year, will probably get fomo if I don’t though.

I’ve seen campsites in Cornwall charging £70 a night for a grass pitch so £350 for 5 nights camping plus entertainment doesn’t seem that bad in the scheme of things. Having said that it would be £350 per person, plus parking so it’s maybe not a fair comparison. If next year is £375 that will probably cement it in as a middle class weekend, expect more champagne bars and glamping options to start popping up.

I think it’s imposed on them by the council as part of their license? I don’t feel bad because I always end up spending a fortune at the bars and traders. Having loads of cans allows me give them to random people. Some new people last year gave me a can of hard seltzer when they over heard me saying how much I fancied one, and they’d only brought 10 in each so I like to have loads to give away.

Shambala last year snuck something into the terms and conditions about having a 10 can limit but they waved me through with a 20L cider box and like 3 crates, didn’t even question it. Gave most of it away to random people because carrying a 20l bag around is a ballache. One of the benefits of everyone having a re-useable cup

Shambala is my favourite festival, the people that go all share the same ethos, there is basically zero litter anywhere for example, someone chucked a can on the floor last year and instantly someone ran over and was like ‘hey we don’t do that here’. you can walk around barefoot without worrying about your feet. Plenty of naked people cutting about the place, lots of group fancy dress, there’s big themes on Friday and Saturday. Fridays used to be ‘fruity friday’ where everyone cross dressed, but it’s now freedom Fridays which is more inclusive, everyone dresses to the max (mostly gender swapping but also carnival/ sparkly/ hardly any clothing), if you’re not wearing something completely outrageous you will stick out like a sore thumb. They don’t advertise it as much as they used to, some of my mates didn’t realise last year and had to buy stuff when they got there. Not as much EDM as secret garden party, there is still plenty of late night areas that go on til 3/4am but it’s generally more chilled, the full line up is on their website. Much more of a family vibe, if anything they allow too many kids tickets, spent half of last year tripping over some conked out toddlers being dragged about the place in those massive trolleys. Lots of small stages/ areas that only hold a couple hundred people, there are some pretty big acts playing this year, Congo natty, the go team, Dutty moonshine will be banging, think A skillz is playing somewhere. As for the adult crowd it’s a lot more shrooms and weed, chilled people, rather than teenagers on ket and pills looking to fight people. loads of workshops/ yoga/ dance classes/ interactive stuff.

They could easily ban multiple flags on the same pole, one flag is a bit of atmosphere/ fun/ meeting point/ whatever. having 3 flags on a single pole is just purposefully blocking the view

Probably the only viable way to get a bit more income without raising ticket prices another £50. not sure it would help with camping much, you’d just send a couple of keen beans on the Wednesday with 5 tents

No much you can do about this, stuff is expensive. Festival requires a lot of stuff. Shambala are trying some kind of pay it forward scheme, where you can leave a donation when buying tickets, that can then go on to give a discount to those on a lower income, this would be insanely complicated on a Glastonbury scale.

I have now become a miserable bastard and opted out of rounds of drinks at festivals, maybe if it’s 1 or 2 other people I’ll be with all day, but more than that and the odds of me staying with that many people for long enough to get a drink bought back is nil. Rounds of drinks can be £35-40 quid now if there’s 5 of you, Assuming no one wants a spirit mixer. We have always tried to bring loads of stuff and been super open with sharing, but when you’ve lugged in 4 crates of cider and someone else bought a 4 pack and a bunch of bananas it’s started to grate on me a little bit, even more so now everything costs so much. 2019 had the £5 meal deal iirc but everyone seemed to be conveniently sold out of it all the time.

This is what’s really bugging me, if you’re going to randomly dish out tickets to people upset by the November ticket sale there are bigger ‘Influencers’ to give them to, her tweet had 3 likes, that’s hardly a big reach. Not that I’m going to dive into Twitter since I deleted my account, but there’s probably people with better sob stories than ‘kids crying thanks’. My brief browse of the Twitter feed page already had people asking if they could have tickets for their cancer diagnosis… The odds of a Vodafone employee stumbling across this tweet by chance are lottery odds.

Let’s not turn this into a boots vs wellies thread. Any boot claiming any level of breathability (that you could reasonably wear all day) will not be waterproof enough to wade through puddles all day. If it’s just ‘muddy’ a decent leather trainer will hold out semi-wet mud. Especially a high top

just fold down the top inch and they become stiff enough to boogie

Most of the opinions so far are popular opinions on this forum. If I had someone setting up my tent for me and picking me up, I’d happily arrive Friday morning and leave Sunday night. Arriving Wednesday makes it far too long, especially in bad weather. Stop making a fuss about straws and then covering yourself in plastic face gems, glitter, polyester mermaid leggings and a plastic flower crown. Flags are fine, unless you’re in the front you can see bugger all anyway, and I’m 6’7. Trolleys/ carts should be banned unless you have mobility issues, makes the queue take way longer than required, it’s a festival not a house move, it’s less effort to do a couple of pleasant trips to the car rather than one mega trip, getting in everyone’s way, wheel falls off, trolley is stuck in the mud. Children being carted around all day in the aforementioned carts are too young to be there and are in the way for 90% of the time. Go to a smaller festival Wellies are better than walking boots, if it’s dry enough for boots you can get away with a decent pair of trainers. It’s way too big

I can’t imagine there’s someone sat there at Vodafone Twitter trawling through tweets from the ticket day, must be some kind of connection somewhere. She has put out another tweet confirming they’ve given her tickets, something doesn’t add up.