Marc's Blog: festivals - Sunrise Festival, Poland

I'll mix things up around a little and start with "where and why Sunrise"? :)

If anyone associated with Sunrise Festival ends up reading this page, please contact me (ledtranceguy on IG or FB), I would love for the extra LEDs to be allowed without issues:

Sunrise, should you go, would I go back?

Sunrise is a legit festival in Poland, if you're Polish and reading this page, you rule :) and you probably already know about Sunrise so you don't need my help with it. If you're not Polish, should you go?

First, since I come from far, once I already fly to Europe, I try to line up more than one festival to make the trip worth it ;) In this case, it was supposed to be Sunrise, Timescape, and a psytrance eclipse festival in Spain that Spain itself unfortunately cancelled. Sunrise is definitely worth the trip if you like to visit good festivals.

Getting there: it is honestly hard to get to. The nearest airport, Szczecin if you can manage to spell it :), is 2h away and barely has any flights and mostly despicable ryanair which were b*tches with luggage as always and costing me a lost hotel room in London after landing 5h too late). Gdansk is a bit bigger, but 3H+ away which is over $300 by private transport unless you manage to catch several buses in a row which may only run once a day. Basically renting a car and driving is the way, or being willing to spend $500+ in taxis/private transport.

But the cool-ish thing about the location is that it's literally on a former airport, with the main runway separating the stages and the campsite. Not a bad idea, an airport is not a bad place to make noise :)

this is actually the runway :)

The festival production itself is quite good, the team knows what they're doing and the DJ selection was pretty good (varied and included a fair amount of trance, which was much appreciated). The 5/6 different stages were quite nice (I'm told they stay in that location all year as the space is otherwise unused the rest of the year).

Another plus is most of the festival was late in the afternoon/at night, and the weather north of poland and close to sunset, was pretty cool and comfortable, which was a nice change from the heat waves going across Europe. Actually to be entirely fair, it got pretty cold later a night, as in bring layers cold.

not too long to wait before sunset

Pricing: it was not cheap. It was priced close to EDC Vegas level which I found high given that it's good but not EDC Level good. If you bought the VIP tickets, it was over $1000, which did include some ok food, but no drinks (those were extra). The food+drinks combo at Euforia Poland a few weeks earlier was much better, and the VIP experience was not to the level of EDC while being close to the same price. Poland is going well, I guess Polish people can afford it :)

VIP: a big plus was being able to get in easily and security just letting you in, but it was quite expensive for a side viewing area on some stages, and some food that was decent, but not worth the $1000+ for 3 days (especially when no drinks were included, not even water)

[rigimg:1024:297*|it was mostly about spending more money to be with other people who had also done so

as many expensive drinks as money can buy ;)

took advantage of the food

Security: that one is a bit tough to write about. The perimeter security was good, the security staff was quite thorough and seemed fair enough in what was allowed, and what was not, but indeed my LED panels were a bit too much for them. There wasn't really a good reason outside of mostly "a bit too weird and high tech". The guy who dealt with me at the entrance called someone to ask for guidance but that person wasn't even there and probably just said no as it's the default answer in Poland :) and to be honest they aren't really used to more elaborate outfits and didn't want to deal with it.

- On day 1, the guy allowed me in with it so I didn't have to go back to the room, but asked me not to use it or he could get in trouble. It was of course simple for me to use it anyway and figure no one would really care, but indeed the guy tried to be careful, I gave him my word not to, and I did not.
- On day #2, I tried another approach (camping side entrance), which was worse, and then figured out that because I had VIP on day 2 (which was very expensive), I could just walk in the main entrance with it and no one cared. Go figure...
- On Day 3, I didn't have VIP so they cared again, and it was about to get denied, until I showed pictures of day 2 where everything was fine, and then they said 'fine'.

So I'm not quite sure what to write, the disappointing part is that there was no one to contact before the event to ask for permission beforehand (no one replied). When I talked to a person in charge of security at the end of day #3 on the way out if there was someone I could reach and get proper permission for a future time, he took email info and I never heard back after that. I understand they have lots of do any many details to worry about though.
Yes, I know some will say "TMI, who cares?" and you're not wrong, while others have told me they are amused when reading the stories of my dealing with security or airports :) (on that topic, I did fine with all 3 airports after replacing my safe USB powerbanks with not as safe but legal lithium batteries)

All in all, it was a nice festival, it was possible to stay at decent hotels walking distance (but not cheap), but I'm not sure if I would go back if I can't reach anyone from the event to get approved for a future time.

Venue

nice decors, even outside by the campsite

camping side

good use of shipping containers ;)

green stage

plenty of food and drinks, for sale but the plastic glass recycling program was way too hard: stay in line, and return a useless token along with the glass or it doesn't count