Marc's Blog: festivals - Another Great Beyond Wonderland Socal

Fun thing, I was re-reading my Beyond Wonderland Scoal 2024 report and it looked quite similar, but that's a good thing because I wrote then that it was the best one yet, so that makes this one still "the best one yet" :) I would also mention that outside of the part that it ends way earlier (02:00 instead of 05:30), you can compare BW to a smaller EDC with better decors and a wonderful fun theme

The lake still looked great

Festival Grounds

Ok, its kind of hilarious is that I managed to sit on the same side of the plane to San Bernardino and get shots of the venue during landing:

don't get lost :)

Beyond really wins for the decors, the Insomniac crews do amazing work every time:

where else can you have a stuffed animal race? :)

And nice booths as always:

I also have to point out that this is likely the best Passport of any Insomniac festival I've been to:

The cool thing about Beyond are the hidden rooms and stages:

And it gets better at night, as always:

They had a few fireworks and a short drone show, those were nothing by EDC standards, but still nice:

took me a while to read 'I shall be late'

One change this year is cell phone service did not improve. I technically had signal, but the cell towers weren't really passing any data. However, they added a lot more wifi, which I must say worked actually quite well (especially compared to some prior festivals where it failed pretty badly):

don't need to write them down, they change every year :)

3 different wifi networks

People

The insomniac performers were top notch again:

And people brought very nice costumes too:

I also took a few more pictures with DJs :)

Day #1

Anyway, let's not get to the two days of festival. The festival started at 15:00 this year again, although this year it was quite hot (unusual heat wave in March).

Trivecta

Tiesto was last and it played a nice set with good trance:

And then this happened, Tiesto stopped his car to take a picture of me and with me on his way out :)

Day #2

Day 2 was a bit cooler, I came earlier to see the trance DJs who played early:

very cool B2B

Infected Mushroom came back

so did Gareth

Good times were had :)

After the event ended at 02:00, went to the after party (onsite), which was better than being stuck in traffic or wait hours for an uber, but it was kind of basic EDM, so I got bored after about 30mn. Still, it was nice to have this for those who wanted to continue to party:

Video of Days #1 & #2:

Thoughts/Conclusions

As I wrote above, working Wifi, 3 different networks no less, was a good addition

Which is good because cell didn't work well

Great decors again

The one thing I didn't love was how offset the VIP viewing areas were from the stages center, especially Chesire Woods

It felt to me that there were plenty of drink vendors, but not even food vendors. The food lines were way long.

Like past years, The many theme appropriate performers were still there, maybe more even, and it really added to the event.

I'll repeat other insomniac festivals, like EDC and Dreamstate, all the staff truly cares and goes all out. Many small details that get sometimes missed elsewhere, are usually flawless

15:00 to 02:00 plus an afterparty until 06:00. That's more than you can do :)

8 stages, definitely a lot...

Now, I do have to state that trance content was low and lower than before. It's not a trance festival of course, and that follows the general general trends, so trance on Day2 was more to be seen as a bonus.

My general verdict is still the same: it's a beautiful festival, I'd say more beautiful than EDC even if smaller, and definitely worth going to, a second only to EDC.

'Till next time:

Links

Google Photos Album

Day 1 & 2 Video Summary

All IG Stories

Video with all IG stories together