Marc's Blog: festivals - Mysteryland by Amsterdam Airport

Mysteryland was apparently the longest running EDM festival in the world. I say was, because for the first time dating back to 1993! I also found out that the theme and ideas were licensed to Tomorrowland, and that it was indeed based on Mysteryland. Once inside, it indeed felt like a smaller tomrrowland, although this year it was also lesser as the organizers decided to retire apparently. As a result the footprint was smaller, some things were apparently missing, and some obvious things like bathrooms were in unacceptable short supply, which for a festival older than 30 years, is hard to excuse. Another thing was the fact that it was cut in half by a freeway, which apparently is normal, but honestly kind of weird and made it a bit annoying to get from one side of the festival to the other.

People

Met our Swiss/Dutch friends who nicely helped us get setup with the hotel:

I managed to use the opportunity to say hi to a few DJs as well as friends:

A few people came with costumes:

Festival Day1

Day 1 thankfully had trance at the trance stage (but only one day). Farius played a lovely set, although I missed half of it given that it took a very long time to walk from the south entrance to that stage which was at the exact opposite, across a freeway that cut the festival in two:

Farius and then Ruben

Nifra was next, but that was more techno than trance

hardcore/hardstyle was a big thing now, 2 days at this nice indoor stage

mainstage was decent

Laura Van Dam

back to trance with Fadi/Aly and Fila

Cosmic Gate

Time to walk around a bit:

the days were long, not much darkness

Back for PvD

After PvD's set, there was a bit of time to see fireworks at mainstage, which were actually decent:

Festival Day2

Day 2 was the lesser day, 0 trance and I was not quite sure what to go see:

the hardstyle stage was a bit rough and difficult for me to enjoy for hours

Went to see another stage that had hippie music (Woodstock) but switched a bit for Laura Van Dam

Spent the rest of the day at the used to be mainstage, now 2nd biggest stage. Music was uninspiring but better than nothing:

There were lots of smaller stages but it was hard to know what they were all playing without walking a lot back and forth:

By then I should have stayed until the end for the fireworks, but the music was uninspiring and I had an early flight out the next day. Turns out the fireworks (and drone) show was actually quite good and would have been nice to see, but it was a long wait, so I watched it from my hotel room:

video summary:

The grounds

I heard it was hard to get in and out, but thankfully I had a hotel walking distance thanks to my dear friends who invited me, so it wasn't too bad

10mn walk through the park

arrived right on time at the VIP entrance, which really was the backstage entrance, weird...

this one I found reasonable until I saw how many bathrooms they didn't have, and how people were just pissing everywhere as a result. It's ultimately on them

the south side had some cute decords, but nothing to write home about

if you got glasses, they had a recycling system that felt ok enough

plenty of food options, but they didn't accept legal tender, just play fake plastic breakable money

nice, but very uphill

I did mention a freeway cutting a festival in 2, true story:

There was camping, but they also had a small higher class village attached to the festival, like tomorrowland. Nice village:

They had one ride, and you got to ride once for free with VIP tickets:

campsite was reasonably big

Thoughts/Conclusions

So, how did it go, what did I think? First, I wanted to like Mysteryland, especially after I found out that it was what Tomorrowland was based on, and it looked like a more nicely sized and manageable tomorrowland. In some ways, it was, but let's also be honest that getting in and out was apparently very tricky for people who had to do so, and if you relied on uber, you were going to have a tough time as there were not enough of them. In my case though, thanks to some lovely friends, I stayed at an airport hotel that was walking distance from the festival, so it was a 15mn walk which was quite manageable.
This year was, according to my friends, special, and not in a good way:

the footprint was smaller, so it was more crowded

some magical experiences and decors were missing

mainstage was moved, the new location seemed ok to me but was honestly hard to get in and out of, steep uphill, and the VIP area was even more tricky to get to, not a win

the severe lack of bathrooms was quite frankly hard to excuse

there was 0 wifi, not even at mainstage VIP, and there was no cell phone service either. This is quite bad if you can't find your friends anymore and phones don't work :( After excellent cell phone service at Nature One where they had extra cell phone towers just for that, and flawless cellphone service at Hadra Trance festival in the middle of nowhere, France, it's hard to excuse

fake plastic money, do I even need to rant about this again? Oh, and those tokens could be cut in half to pay half tokens since if you're going to have a stupid useless festival currency, might as well make it complicated and give you change in half plastic tokens with sharp pointy edges. Read more on fake festival money and why you should boycott it, here

the VIP amenities, felt limited, especially for the VIP platform for mainstage that was very hard to find and quite hard to reach

What I did like:

despite the apparent/obvious cost savings, it still had a remnant of magical village feel from tomorrowland, its successor. That was nice.

although some places were crowded and it was hard to get around at times, it was not tomorrowland crowded

the food options were good, although they did not take legal currency in any way, so they were useless to me

security, especially in the VIP entrance, were super chill. That was very much appreciated.

there was real free water, but not really, you had to buy a plastic refillable pouch, the same one from parookaville that broke, leaked and destroyed my laptop a few weeks after the festival, and you could only pay with 2 fake money tokens, which was 8 euros. After that, you could refill for free. It's not luminosity bad, but it's not great either. On the plus side, I think you could refill whatever container for free by the toilets, and they did not prevent you from bringing your own empty water containers

water was not really free, it was 8 euros one time cost, free refills

the fake plastic play money, which can be cut in 2

a big more thorough search in GA, VIP was super chill

I was going to say that tokens were complete bullshit since you were forced to buy them with a credit card anyway, but the entrance did let you pay for them with cash. I will let you decide how many people in Holland do not have credit cards or pay by phone:

Now, things get a bit nebulous, but I heard that because the organisers were retiring, they had an incentive to maximize their profit this year, at the expense of the festival itself, not good :-/
Of course, given new organizers in 2 years (and festival cancelled nest year), it's kind of hard to say how it will be.

In a nutshell, I'm happy to have been able to see this very long running festival, and thankful to my friends who helped organize the hotel. The festival itself was ok, but indeed it was not one of its best years. Music-wise it at least had one day of mostly trance (versus potentially 0 for tomorrowland if you pick the wrong week), but the 2nd day, it didn't have much music that I enjoyed, despite many stages. Maybe I didn't find it, or it wasn't there.
I guess let's see how the future edition is, but given that it's been at the same time than burning man, it's been difficult for me to go in the past, and let's see how it becomes in the future with the new owners.
Is it worth flying across the world, for? I'd say no.
Is it a decent, cheaper, easier alternative to tomorrowland? Sure, why not.

Links

google photos pictures

video summary: https://youtu.be/dsMo0LF1mmA

summary of instagram videos: https://youtu.be/VyNPEnewKb8