One change I'd make to the festival is....

[guypjfreak]

Make more room ie the walk ways in se corner.. 

Gets so rammed it's pointless sometimes to even bother to go there.. 

They such an effort it's a shame that at night it's ni on impossible to appreciate it... Plus open that fucking lane 

Plus smack the dick heads on noze who leave all those metal containers... And balloons that don't disintegrate.. 

Bring back the green police and anyone doing glamping should only be allowed one change of clothing.. 

NFR NFC of course 

[Wanderlei]

On 3/20/2022 at 11:22 PM, rivalschools.price said:

I’ve never had sound bleed issues from other stages at Glastonbury and the Other stage has sounded fine when I’ve been there.

Does this make my ears better than everyone else’s, or worse?

I think it depends on where you stand, and how windy it is. Pixies sounded great (stood front and left), James sounded awful (mid distance, right).

[Joshuwarr]

I'd probably opt for a total reimagining of the Silver Hayes area. It's incredibly popular and has one or two great venues but I do think it suffers from lacking an identity beyond being an area for dance music. Maybe they need to go further with the theming like we see at The Blues. Always found venues like The Gully (?) a little out of place and often quite quiet unless they have one of the bigger acts on. 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

1 minute ago, Joshuwarr said:

I'd probably opt for a total reimagining of the Silver Hayes area. It's incredibly popular and has one or two great venues but I do think it suffers from lacking an identity beyond being an area for dance music. Maybe they need to go further with the theming like we see at The Blues. Always found venues like The Gully (?) a little out of place and often quite quiet unless they have one of the bigger acts on. 

I said the same at the start of the thread, the blues is good but the rest of it is just bland tents either side of a cut through. It would be good if they could replace the tents with some boomtown/SE corner style venues to give it a bit of a horizon and some character. I guess budget is the issue, and maybe even build time and logistics, but I can’t see why they couldn’t look to replace one tent every year with something more imaginative.

Another solution could be almost the reverse, revamp some of the SE corner venues like Genosys and the underground one, and move those to Silver Hayes, although I guess there could be some issues with the areas being run by different teams. 

[Smeble]

I’d increase the proportion of tickets for the paying public, fewer volunteers and fewer tickets for performers. 

 

[gfa]

2 minutes ago, Smeble said:

I’d increase the proportion of tickets for the paying public, fewer volunteers and fewer tickets for performers. 

Volunteers are important for the festival to run and performer tickets are part of their fee - i'm sure they want as many people going and paying as possible

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

4 minutes ago, Smeble said:

I’d increase the proportion of tickets for the paying public, fewer volunteers and fewer tickets for performers. 

 

I think that would be tricky, it’s difficult to put a festival on without either of those, plus considering most performers pay for a fraction of a normal fee there is an element of needing to keep them happy if they want another couple of tickets each for friends etc. short of that, what would you have them do, cut some of the performers from their band? Leave the drummer at home?

Edited March 22, 2022 by Deaf Nobby Burton

[Joshuwarr]

7 minutes ago, Smeble said:

I’d increase the proportion of tickets for the paying public, fewer volunteers and fewer tickets for performers. 

 

Would make the overall festival experience worse. Many of the volunteers help us get through the gates quicker when we arrive, help clear up the mess and help flag issues to stewards. Many also do vital work to support the campaigns and charities aligned to the festival.

 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

2 minutes ago, Joshuwarr said:

Would make the overall festival experience worse. Many of the volunteers help us get through the gates quicker when we arrive, help clear up the mess and help flag issues to stewards. Many also do vital work to support the campaigns and charities aligned to the festival.

 

Yeah, increase general punters and at the same time decrease the people picking up their rubbish, cleaning their toilets, making sure they don’t get run over etc. sounds like a great idea.

[tarw]

13 minutes ago, Smeble said:

I’d increase the proportion of tickets for the paying public, fewer volunteers and fewer tickets for performers. 

 

That would drastically cut the amount given to charities!  The charities have the contracts for marshalling sanitation etc. and get volunteers to do the work whilst they collect the money for the contract. 
 

Not having volunteer tickets would mean that the festival would have to pay commercial companies to do those roles to satisfy the licensing conditions. Yes that might mean more tickets to sell and more revenue to pay the commercial companies but companies need to make a profit and would take a big chunk out of the money available for charities. 
 

And that is without mentioning the change in demographic that having more paying customers and fewer volunteers and musicians would cause. 

[Crazyfool01]

35 minutes ago, Joshuwarr said:

I'd probably opt for a total reimagining of the Silver Hayes area. It's incredibly popular and has one or two great venues but I do think it suffers from lacking an identity beyond being an area for dance music. Maybe they need to go further with the theming like we see at The Blues. Always found venues like The Gully (?) a little out of place and often quite quiet unless they have one of the bigger acts on. 

I think you might find that a few of the venues named aren’t there this year …

[stuie]

28 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

I said the same at the start of the thread, the blues is good but the rest of it is just bland tents either side of a cut through. It would be good if they could replace the tents with some boomtown/SE corner style venues to give it a bit of a horizon and some character. I guess budget is the issue, and maybe even build time and logistics, but I can’t see why they couldn’t look to replace one tent every year with something more imaginative.

Another solution could be almost the reverse, revamp some of the SE corner venues like Genosys and the underground one, and move those to Silver Hayes, although I guess there could be some issues with the areas being run by different teams. 

I don't think Block9 would be particularly happy about giving their venues away to Silver Hayes, but even if they did the sound limits and operating times are much reduced for Silver Hayes than they are for SE corner. 

There's a reason most of the late night stuff is in one place.

[stuie]

38 minutes ago, Joshuwarr said:

I'd probably opt for a total reimagining of the Silver Hayes area. It's incredibly popular and has one or two great venues but I do think it suffers from lacking an identity beyond being an area for dance music. Maybe they need to go further with the theming like we see at The Blues. Always found venues like The Gully (?) a little out of place and often quite quiet unless they have one of the bigger acts on. 

 

1 minute ago, crazyfool1 said:

I think you might find that a few of the venues named aren’t there this year …

Weren't Gully and Blues the same venue in 2019? 

 

[Rose-Colored Boy]

On 3/20/2022 at 9:00 AM, Supernintendo Chalmers said:

I don't think there's one ticket agent that has the perfect system. A few have got some useful features, I can't help but feel like a combination of some of them gives us a much easier and fairer way of securing the tickets 

I understand why they don’t want to do a ballot, or guarantee that a set proportion of tickets go to people who didn’t attend the previous year.

But surely just give us something to ensure people who are there on the dot of 9am have an advantage over people who rock up 10 minutes later. Ticketmaster’s queuing system which shows you how many people are in front of you would be a massive improvement. Once you’re in you’re in type thing. The ‘hit F5 and hope’ thing feels so outdated..

..and I promise I’m not just saying that because the last time I was successful was October 2014. 

[Crazyfool01]

3 minutes ago, stuie said:

 

Weren't Gully and Blues the same venue in 2019? 

 

Can’t remember tbh but I’ve heard that silver Hayes is streamlining … and those names I think were mentioned although it was a good few months back 

[stuie]

1 minute ago, crazyfool1 said:

Can’t remember tbh but I’ve heard that silver Hayes is streamlining … and those names I think were mentioned although it was a good few months back 

I think they should use West Holts as the inspiration for a new Silver Hayes.  One big stage with excellent programming and the area will have its own vibe.  The days of the dedicated 'Dance Village' are over as it's now represented in many other places across the festival. 

[Crazyfool01]

1 minute ago, stuie said:

I think they should use West Holts as the inspiration for a new Silver Hayes.  One big stage with excellent programming and the area will have its own vibe.  The days of the dedicated 'Dance Village' are over as it's now represented in many other places across the festival. 

I used to think it was better with some big dance tents … maybe just because I was younger then 

[chazwwe]

As every year, wanting a revamp on Silvery Hayes. It was fun to walk around the first year I went but hasn't done anything for me since. 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

21 minutes ago, stuie said:

I don't think Block9 would be particularly happy about giving their venues away to Silver Hayes, but even if they did the sound limits and operating times are much reduced for Silver Hayes than they are for SE corner. 

There's a reason most of the late night stuff is in one place.

That’s kind of irrelevant, I’m talking about the venues/instillations replacing the tents, nothing about what Silver Hayes output in terms of music would have to change, and why would it just because the physical venue someone was performing from looked different.

At some stage block 9 are going to have to freshen their venues up, Boomtown does it every year.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Deaf Nobby Burton

[stuie]

4 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

At some stage block 9 are going to have to freshen their venues up, Boomtown does it every year.

In 2019 Block 9 retired London Underground and replaced it with IICON.  I think that covers the freshening up part.

[Supernintendo Chalmers]

29 minutes ago, Rose-Colored Boy said:

I understand why they don’t want to do a ballot, or guarantee that a set proportion of tickets go to people who didn’t attend the previous year.

But surely just give us something to ensure people who are there on the dot of 9am have an advantage over people who rock up 10 minutes later. Ticketmaster’s queuing system which shows you how many people are in front of you would be a massive improvement. Once you’re in you’re in type thing. The ‘hit F5 and hope’ thing feels so outdated..

..and I promise I’m not just saying that because the last time I was successful was October 2014. 

Yep. A blank screen or the dinosaur of doom is hugely demoralising. With the technology available these days, there's absolutely no reason why they can't provide:

• A holding screen refreshing every so often, giving an indication of sales progress
• A virtual queuing system, indicating your place in it, maybe even an estimated time to move into the next stage
• Once you've secured your tickets, a reliable system that ensures you won't be kicked out of the screen
• Sufficient time in which to carefully enter your registration and payment details. Up to ten minutes would be fair, given the amount of information you've got to enter, whilst your adrenaline is pumping
• Maybe a section on the website where you can sign-in, say up to two hours before the sale, pre-load your registration (which would check that your information is also correct) and payment details ahead of the sale going live? Then, when the sale actually starts and you secure your tickets, all your details are entered and pre-authorised, making it a much quicker and less stressful exercise.

The sad thing is, come Thursday evening and Sunday lunchtime, we'll probably be talking about the same system and website failures that have plagued the ticket sale for the last 8/9 years.

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by Supernintendo Chalmers

[Rose-Colored Boy]

1 minute ago, Supernintendo Chalmers said:

Yep. A blank screen or the dinosaur of doom is hugely demoralising. With the technology available these days, there's absolutely no reason why they can't provide:

• A holding screen refreshing every so often, giving an indication of sales progress
• A virtual queuing system, indicating your place in it, maybe even an estimated time to move into the next stage
• Once you've secured your tickets, a reliable system that ensures you won't be kicked out of the screen
• Sufficient time in which to carefully enter your registration and payment details. Up to ten minutes would be fair, given the amount of information you've got to enter, whilst your adrenaline is pumping
• Maybe a section on the website where you can sign-in, say up to two hours before the sale, pre-load your registration (which would check that your information is also correct) and payment details ahead of the sale going live? Then, when the sale actually starts and you secure your tickets, all your details are entered and pre-authorised, making it a much quicker and less stressful exercise.

 

 

Spot on. I am loathe to criticise the Eavii because they run a wonderful festival which has given me some of my favourite memories, but by this point their ongoing reluctance to modernise the ticketing system beyond what worked in 2005 reflects quite badly on what is otherwise a flawless operation. 

[mattiloy]

3 minutes ago, Supernintendo Chalmers said:

Yep. A blank screen or the dinosaur of doom is hugely demoralising. With the technology available these days, there's absolutely no reason why they can't provide:

• A holding screen refreshing every so often, giving an indication of sales progress
• A virtual queuing system, indicating your place in it, maybe even an estimated time to move into the next stage
• Once you've secured your tickets, a reliable system that ensures you won't be kicked out of the screen
• Sufficient time in which to carefully enter your registration and payment details. Up to ten minutes would be fair, given the amount of information you've got to enter, whilst your adrenaline is pumping
• Maybe a section on the website where you can sign-in, say up to two hours before the sale, pre-load your registration (which would check that your information is also correct) and payment details ahead of the sale going live? Then, when the sale actually starts and you secure your tickets, all your details are entered and pre-authorised, making it a much quicker and less stressful exercise.

The sad thing is, come Thursday evening and Sunday lunchtime, we'll probably be talking about the same system and website failures that have plagued the ticket sale for the last 8/9 years.

 

Also the creeping seetickets fee inflation is irritating.

Yes it presumably costs a little more to print everybody’s faces on their tickets but 10 quid is ridiculous and surely in the 2020s the ticket id + checks could be achieved digitally.

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

11 minutes ago, stuie said:

In 2019 Block 9 retired London Underground and replaced it with IICON.  I think that covers the freshening up part.

Yes, you seem to be missing the point of what I’m saying.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Deaf Nobby Burton

[incident]

1 minute ago, Supernintendo Chalmers said:

Yep. A blank screen or the dinosaur of doom is hugely demoralising. With the technology available these days, there's absolutely no reason why they can't provide:

• A holding screen refreshing every so often, giving an indication of sales progress
• A virtual queuing system, indicating your place in it, maybe even an estimated time to move into the next stage
• Once you've secured your tickets, a reliable system that ensures you won't be kicked out of the screen
• Sufficient time in which to carefully enter your registration and payment details. Up to ten minutes would be fair, given the amount of information you've got to enter, whilst your adrenaline is pumping
• Maybe a section on the website where you can sign-in, say up to two hours before the sale, pre-load your registration (which would check that your information is also correct) and payment details ahead of the sale going live? Then, when the sale actually starts and you secure your tickets, all your details are entered and pre-authorised, making it a much quicker and less stressful exercise.

Point 1 is fair enough and should be like that.

Point 2 sounds nice in theory but in practice it effectively becomes a random/ballot system - and hopefully nobody wants that. While opinion will vary on this, for me the balance of of persistence / preparation needed vs chance of logging on unprepared and randomly scoring a ticket is currently about right.

Point 3 and 4 are fair enough, but have been much improved over the years anyway - while it still happens occasionally I don't think it's the issue it was in the past.