π
2024-07-26 01:01
in Clubbing, Festivals
So my first time at Tomorrowland in 2022, I had mixed feelings (which you can read in that report), and this was a 2nd try ;)
they blocked the city busses from their normal route and stranded me there, forcing me to walk 40mn to a shuttle station to take a shuttle to a taxi stop where I got totally scammed by taxis charging 100 euros and more for short rides
people taking the official shuttles and hotels also had the 40mn+ walk and it took up to 2h until they got to their room
the taxi stand line was single threaded, ridiculously long, and taxis still totally scammed riders in violation of the law
This year, I tried a global journey package, mostly as another questionable way to get tickets. Since they are nearly impossible to get during the main sale, you get to overpay for a package you don't want or need so that you can get at ticket, but even that is not as simple as it seems:
I got to stay over 7h in line to be able to buy a package
by the time it was my turn, I was unable to get busses to/from amsterdam, I Was forced to go a farther away city in Germany
the bus out, I didn't even take, I was just forced to pay for it and had to buy a different shuttle bus to brussels charleroy airport to fly to Hungary afterwards (for Ozora)
despite global journey and very very overpriced fancier tents, they were all sold out anyway by the time my number came, so all I got was a camping spot with no tent (bring your own). For reference, the closer tents that were setup, ran in the multiple thousand dollars range and still sold out (which is also linked to how miserable the daily in and out transport situation, is).
Bringing a big tent all the way to the camping site was not fun and a very long walk
TMRL has figured and ironed out lots of things, but they need camping shuttles, the walk with heavy luggage is pretty ridiculous (could be 30mn dragging luggage on wooden boards). If someone tells me I bring too many things, a proper tent, sleeping bag, mattress, and required electrical setup to charge all my LED gear, is a lot of stuff and weighs more than I wish it did.
The global journey bus package, despite being from the totally wrong country and city, was pleasant and well run:
I kind of want to avoid going into the tech and security details of each of those made up payment systems by festivals that are not banks, do not have the proper security, reliability and other training and skills necessary to do this as well as our credit cards and phones, do, but I have to admit that of all the festivals with this BS, they probably have the most reliable system. However, in no way does it mean it's ok, and it's of course totally unnecessary, especially in first world countries where almost everyone has credit cards and pay by phone (for the few that don't, then fine, do give them some pay by wristband or whatever option) When I said it was a totally ridiculous fake currency, the exchange rate is just silly:
The bus trip was pleasant but if you now consider that: - I had to fly to another country, farther away - then take a train - to finally get that bus (which basically half a day was lost going in the wrong direction plus overnight hotel) just to be allowed to get a global journey package in order to be able to get a ticket and camp, then it just didn't feel as nice anymore. I had to choose busses in 5mn in the middle of a night in January before the cart timed out, and picked Amsterdam for the return city. This ended up not being what I needed, but they absolutely refused to change it, even 4 months early, at any cost. A full day of travel was then lost on the way back, to go to Amsterdam, turn around, and take a train to Frankfurt to meet the plane home.
And no, in 5mn, I didn't know if I'd get a plane home from Amsterdam or Frankfurt, so I picked at random, picked wrong, and they refused to help. They didn't say the other bus was full, they said they never change anything once it's booked, even a name in a spreadsheet for a bus. I'll let you decide if this is nice, or not.
I don't want to sound all grumpy but those bad experiences, before the festival even starts, partially ruin what is otherwise a pretty awesome festival and I have to say, probably the best day festival experience in the world (EDC still wins that for night festival, hands down).
If you compared with let's say untold, there you can walk to the venue or take a quick bus or electric scooter back to your room.
For transport, if you compare to EDC, I got from my Vegas strip hotel room to EDC and back quicker than from Mechelen to Tomorrowland last time, and for much cheaper. This time around, the walk back to camp was faster but still 30mn or so, it's not close.
Tomorrowland does win for nature (park, water, ducks, etc) and as a day festival, while EDC remains the best night festival in the world.
As for Untold, it was my favorite in Europe since it's 4 days, big and impressive enough, and has a better feel with all the locals coming to party too, including kids (which was not a bad thing actually). But now that Untold killed its trance stage this year (2025 as I write this), it's lost its main attraction for me
Below is what I wrote 2 years prior, spoiler alert, I did go back once ;)
Will I go back? For creamfields, the security and staff were so bad, plus so many other problems, that I'm unlikely to go back. For tomorrowland I'd say maybe, except for the fact that I don't love having to fight for tickets, being forced to buy some overpriced package with a poor hotel room far away just to get a ticket (or hell, now they also sell you NFTs to help ensure a ticket allocation), not really knowing if the lineup will be nice on a given weekend, before buying the tickets, or knowing if my favorite artists if they come, could end up at an underwhelming stage like Kara Savi. So let's say, maybe? And indeed what I wrote then was pretty much accurate. I did give it a 2nd chance. Camping did fix the transport issues, but it's massively inconvenient for me to carry decent camping gear from home, had to lug lots of solar panels and spare batteries that barely charged my stuff enough to make it through the 4 days, and the multiple kilometer walk while dragging heavy luggage (my gear is indeed heavy, batteries weigh a ton), was not happiness. As I guessed last time, the global journey option does get you tickets, but not really the magical journey you should get unless you have additional connections, or bought the NFTs (pay to be able to buy), and so forth. And if you're going to tell me about pre-set easy tents, some with power, if we put aside that they were literally multiple thousand dollars, as I said earlier, they were totally sold out before I could even get one in my cart
Despite all this, it remains a well run and impressive festival, but once you factor in the amount of work/cost vs fun ratio, it goes down a fair amount in my eyes. See ya:
Tomorrowland, Take #2
I tried again this year, and considering how bad the transport situation was when not staying at tomorrowland, namely:
comfortable busses
lunch stop included
and a DJ for music during lunch, sweet!
The Grounds
Once camped, the facilities were nice, they did a good job opening fields one by one in a way that people don't waste space, each area had its showers and lockers and food, but despite the global journey bus, by the time we arrived, all the nearby campsites were already full and it was a long walk to the nearest available site, and for some locations people waited hours for some of the fields to open (I did not do that and picked the first available field even if it was far). You get dropped off close to the festival entrance, but quite far from where you can actually camp unless you have one of those multi thousand dollar camp packages (the ones that were sold out anyway):
yeah, I didn't look happy after dragging heavy luggage for so long
after a long long walk, arrived to the first piece of grass they opened (moving line)
brought a semi proper tent with solar panels that barely made enough power to recharge much
no complaint, those were generous
all in all the city feel in each camping sub section, was indeed very nice
with a helpdesk in each location
fun times
all your essentials
if you didn't bring your own tent, these popups didn't look too bad
they had this
and these you could rent, which was not a bad idea
this was a picture after the end of 4th night, still had juice left
Day 0: Thursday
Thursday had a pre-party for campers, which we went right after setting up tent. A few hours of partying:
Day 1: Friday
Day 1, started bright and early in the afternoon:
the search getting in was pretty fast and reasonable
the rave cave was small and not that great, but fun to see
view inside
next door, the cage also took a while to get in
a really cool thing were the screens with fake sky and fake birds
Watch the video to see the animated sky and birds:
nice and big, and much easier to get in and out than Parookaville
Day 2: Saturday
Day2 start with some time in the beautiful butterfly stage:
I so miss that I wasn't there in previous years when Ferry Corsten played gouryella there
Thanks M.I.K.E. for some trance
Day 3: Sunday
And day 3, home stretch!
Whitenoise
And thanks Whitenoise for the lovely psytrance
The People
I'll have to say again that while Euopean festivals are not the most impressive for people bringing cool and fun outfits, TMRL is actually an exception, and that's good, I love that.
limited totems :)
a few LEDs
Thoughts and Conclusions
Tickets
Tickets are hard to get, they're expensive, tomorrowland tries to get you to pay for overpriced packages you don't want or need, to secure a ticket, and they make ticket transfer complicated to avoid resellers I assume. This year, I figured that opting to buy one of those unnecessary overpriced global journey packages, would help, but it was still a close to 8H wait in virtual line, ruining an entire night of sleep to get tickets while getting busses from the wrong country and not be able to get any kind of very overpriced pre-setup tent. Needless to say that even by being willing to pay way too much, it was not a good experience.Security
Security was more than reasonable. They either didn't check me very carefully, and were fine with my outfit. Ultimately they mostly cared about not bringing food/drinks and weapons, which is fine by me. All in all, given the size of the event, I found security screening to be sufficient without being too much, as well as being efficient (pretty fast to get in). I'd rank it on par or slightly better than the average festival.Fake Money/Pearl BS
This is mostly a copy of my previous review: why does this festival think it's not only still ok to do this fake money BS, but as an added insult it's a completely made up currency that is meant for you to have no idea what you're spending. TMRL, this is not how you treat your customers if you respect them and already charged them more than almost any other festival to get in, in the first place.I kind of want to avoid going into the tech and security details of each of those made up payment systems by festivals that are not banks, do not have the proper security, reliability and other training and skills necessary to do this as well as our credit cards and phones, do, but I have to admit that of all the festivals with this BS, they probably have the most reliable system. However, in no way does it mean it's ok, and it's of course totally unnecessary, especially in first world countries where almost everyone has credit cards and pay by phone (for the few that don't, then fine, do give them some pay by wristband or whatever option) When I said it was a totally ridiculous fake currency, the exchange rate is just silly:
seriously, WTH?
Food
Like last time, the food options, range, and variety were absolutely excellent. They even had full on restaurants within the venue (which I believe were the only ones to accept real money).
Transport
You can read my report from last time where I took city busses and taxis. It was pretty bad and horribly overpriced. This time, I used the global journey busses.The bus trip was pleasant but if you now consider that: - I had to fly to another country, farther away - then take a train - to finally get that bus (which basically half a day was lost going in the wrong direction plus overnight hotel) just to be allowed to get a global journey package in order to be able to get a ticket and camp, then it just didn't feel as nice anymore. I had to choose busses in 5mn in the middle of a night in January before the cart timed out, and picked Amsterdam for the return city. This ended up not being what I needed, but they absolutely refused to change it, even 4 months early, at any cost. A full day of travel was then lost on the way back, to go to Amsterdam, turn around, and take a train to Frankfurt to meet the plane home.
And no, in 5mn, I didn't know if I'd get a plane home from Amsterdam or Frankfurt, so I picked at random, picked wrong, and they refused to help. They didn't say the other bus was full, they said they never change anything once it's booked, even a name in a spreadsheet for a bus. I'll let you decide if this is nice, or not.
Venues/Stages/Music
Last time I was upset at how poor the trance stage was, when most other stages were between very good and amazing. This year, they fixed the problem by having no trance at all the week I randomly picked since you're forced to buy tickets and pick a week, before they announce the lineup. Again, such a non respect of the customer, but clearly they sell out in minutes, so they don't care.I don't want to sound all grumpy but those bad experiences, before the festival even starts, partially ruin what is otherwise a pretty awesome festival and I have to say, probably the best day festival experience in the world (EDC still wins that for night festival, hands down).
Verdict
It's a nice festival, but it's expensive, very hard to get tickets, forcing you to buy things you don't need, and complicated to get in and out.If you compared with let's say untold, there you can walk to the venue or take a quick bus or electric scooter back to your room.
For transport, if you compare to EDC, I got from my Vegas strip hotel room to EDC and back quicker than from Mechelen to Tomorrowland last time, and for much cheaper. This time around, the walk back to camp was faster but still 30mn or so, it's not close.
Tomorrowland does win for nature (park, water, ducks, etc) and as a day festival, while EDC remains the best night festival in the world.
As for Untold, it was my favorite in Europe since it's 4 days, big and impressive enough, and has a better feel with all the locals coming to party too, including kids (which was not a bad thing actually). But now that Untold killed its trance stage this year (2025 as I write this), it's lost its main attraction for me
Below is what I wrote 2 years prior, spoiler alert, I did go back once ;)
Will I go back? For creamfields, the security and staff were so bad, plus so many other problems, that I'm unlikely to go back. For tomorrowland I'd say maybe, except for the fact that I don't love having to fight for tickets, being forced to buy some overpriced package with a poor hotel room far away just to get a ticket (or hell, now they also sell you NFTs to help ensure a ticket allocation), not really knowing if the lineup will be nice on a given weekend, before buying the tickets, or knowing if my favorite artists if they come, could end up at an underwhelming stage like Kara Savi. So let's say, maybe? And indeed what I wrote then was pretty much accurate. I did give it a 2nd chance. Camping did fix the transport issues, but it's massively inconvenient for me to carry decent camping gear from home, had to lug lots of solar panels and spare batteries that barely charged my stuff enough to make it through the 4 days, and the multiple kilometer walk while dragging heavy luggage (my gear is indeed heavy, batteries weigh a ton), was not happiness. As I guessed last time, the global journey option does get you tickets, but not really the magical journey you should get unless you have additional connections, or bought the NFTs (pay to be able to buy), and so forth. And if you're going to tell me about pre-set easy tents, some with power, if we put aside that they were literally multiple thousand dollars, as I said earlier, they were totally sold out before I could even get one in my cart
Despite all this, it remains a well run and impressive festival, but once you factor in the amount of work/cost vs fun ratio, it goes down a fair amount in my eyes. See ya:
another long walk to the other exit where the airport busses where but they were on time
and on to Charleroix to fly to Hungary and Ozora
See more images for Tomorrowland 2024: Try #2