Ok, so I like electronic dance music, more specifically Trance. When I started in the 1990's, the US was a bit behind in that department.
Still, with San Francisco and San Jose nearby, I've had some opportunities to see some great EDM/Trance DJs. Back in the early 2000's, they sadly played club music in the US that was nowhere close to the hits they had composed and were known for, but over the years, as Trance started becoming more popular, those DJs finally started playing their good tunes in the US too, and maybe from 2004 on, it's only been getting better. Popsicle Halloween 2004 was really the beginning of great music parties in the San Francisco Area, and thankfully things have gotten even better since then
As a matter of fact, after another 10 years (2015 and beyond) the good news is that Trance has grown quite a following in the US, and places like the SF Bay Area, and while Trance has been declared dead a few times in the last 10 years, it's still going strong here.
Trance Family SF is definitely strong in the area, we've been getting more big trance parties every year, including many top DJs that come visit us what feels like every other week now (as of 2018-2019), and through those events, I made many friends in Trance Family SF. Thanks to you all.
Over those years, I got the chance to meet a few of my favourite DJs, including Armin more than once, and my last hobby has been to work on lights for my shirt and pants (version 3) and (version 4)
And if you are curious about my LED outfit, you can read more about it on my led peacock engineer medium post and if you'd like to read all my festivals or dreamstate, or clubbing posts, please click on the links higher on the page to get taken to those categories.
Props to Trancejesus who is responsible for me coming after all these years:
I used his signup code to thank him for encouraging me to go :) If you like this report and it inspires you to go, or to go again, you can use my signup code for a discount of up to $200: "ledtranceguy"
As I write this, barely a week after the cruise is over, the 2026 cruise is close to being sold out (it felt weird that it went on sale before the 2025 one even left, but now I know why). If you are interested in going, don't delay :)
This looks like the canonical page to sign up for 2026.
Wait, after it being around 20 years, you only went on groovecruise this year for the first time?
Yes, Groove Cruise has been around for a long time (20-ish years), but I had never been so far, because:
lots of festivals, can't be everywhere :)
I've been avoiding festivals in the winter because winter is for snowboarding :) (but realistically January has often been dry in CA, so not a terrible month to lose)
Most years until recently, I was going to Australia for linux.conf.au at the same time, and that was not something I wanted to miss. These wonderful 20 years are however over for me, now
Going all the way to Miami is not exactly next door for me :)
Yes, there was a 2nd yearly cruise leaving From CA instead in summer, but I heard that one had no trance, and if no trance, not really interested :)
Last year it conflicted with 6 days of Unkonscious, so both were not possible
And I'll also admit that I have mixed feelings about cruise ships, as I find them pretty wasteful, especially in a case where quite frankly if the ship were anchored to a parking lot, and connected to the electrical grid instead of having to burn ridiculous amounts of fuel in the middle of the ocean, most attendees would probably be just as happy (let's be honest, the fact that it went travelled 4 days to go to to Labadee for a few hours, was probably not the most important part of the cruise)
I'm on a boat... I'm on a boat... Take a good look at me, I'm on a motherf'ing boat :)
Now that this is out of the way, and you probably think I'm a killjoy :) I did obviously end up going this year and had a fantastic time. Yes, I would have had just as much as a good time if the cruise ship (Alure of the Sea) had been sitting in the middle of a parking lot somehwere for those 4 days, since it's really a small city with all the fun happening inside and the mere 3.5h in Labadee were fun but didn't seem essential. That said it's a cruise ship, so it's somehow supposed to boat somewhere, and it did :)
The ship was the 4th largest in existence as of today if I read right, and was pretty impressive. It did lack waterslides, and the kart racing track I saw on some ship commercial ;) but it had:
2 flowriders (wave makers to surf)
I'm not that great at it, but I tried :)
2 climbing walls that didn't seem to get used
minigolf
promenade that was pretty
game room and room for kids that went unused for that cruise
many pools and jacuzzi
some levitating platform you could drink on, this thing:
many restaurants and shops of course, including a yummy Teppanyaki. The regular restaurants/buffet were below par unfortunately, but the specialized ones were good:
good food and presentation
casino:
running track:
yes, it was legit :)
very many theatres and rooms that were turned into night clubs or stages
outdoor theatre that became mainstage, except when it was raining, which it did (also the first day was very cold due to highly unusual weather)
This is a good time to point out that the Groovecruise team did an amazing job decking out the place and turning a cruiseship into a small city with nightclubs and festival areas. They really went all out, all the way to confetti that had to be cleaned carefully afterwards and even balloon drops. Multiple stages had lasers and cool lighting and overall the sound was good. Given the location and that it had to be installed and torn down in record time because the ship was used for regular cruises just before, and just after, was nothing short of amazing.
The crew was very amused by the GC crowds (who wouldn't), and put up with the decorations people brought from LED walls to a wall of hanging dicks you had to walk through to cross the corridor :)
cabins with view on the promenade
this display was fun to read :)
Boat Policies/security
The boat rules were of course geared towards the normal cruises they had the rest of the year, but ultimately they worked well for GC too, and they were pretty lenient with the many things people brought it for the party. Department of immigration somehow brought sniffing dogs to do their own scan of people getting in, but outside of that, the rules were mostly reasonable:
they did allow one bottle of alcohol per person
no issues with costumes or led gear for people like me
there was a restriction on bringing your own power strips, since some can be crap and unsafe, but I didn't hear that it was much of an issue
they did scan all check in luggage, and that caused delays in getting your luggage of up to 8H. That was no ideal
as mentioned below, the line management and arrival slot times that were handed out, were a joke and it took 2.5h or more to get in. That was disappointing.
the restaurants had non festival hours, so getting food after 22:00 was challenging, at best. At least food did not seem to run out in the few places that still had food at night
speaking of food, they took my half open bag of chips at the entrance because it was open. ooops :)
overall I think the cruise company and definitely the staff, were very very good sports dealing with all of us. I'm sure we made their 5 days interesting, but they did the best to please anytime they could (polar opposite of Creamfields and Lumi where the customer was almost an enemy in multiple places).
I did not hear about major issues with theft, which is good (better crowds to start with, and I guess you can only run so far on a boat, haha)
Actually a lot of people returned lost items, thank you
I was worried about the lack of plugs, but with 2 big multichannel USB chargers (10 and 8 outputs) plus a 4 port one, I was ok :) This also answers the question of how many batteries I use and have to charge (a bit too many, haha):
People
Ok, so I've been to many festivals (over 50 in 20+ years), and I like the costume aspect of those who encourage them, like most insomniac festivals in the US including EDC Vegas, Beyond Wonderland, and Dreamstate Socal. But I have to say that Groovecruise won as "best vibes and most costumes" by a good amount. I was positively impressed and it was loads of fun:
bringing a full LED wall, great job!
and let's not forget the dick wall from deck 14
[rigimg:1024:3128*|the elevator rides were "fun" :)]
Kudos to this couple for the fantastic LED costumes:
the same folks again
And then this guy, impressive tech but it must have been fragile and with inadequate batteries because I only saw it once for 20mn or so:
A good amount of nice LED outfits, well done!
Of course, I had fun taking pictures with existing friends and new ones:
as odds are, Daxson was the first person I ran into :)
anjunafam
Nadine and Robert Nickson
of course Thorgodofbass was there, and I was ready for him :)
also ready for Nilsix :)
and great to see Maddix, he said 'you again' :)
had fun with my new hat :)
Groovecruise Days 1-2: Strong Warmup
The arrival was not that great. They gave us arrival slots just to ignore them and round robin people between 5 lines independently on when people arrived. That was a very bad move. The poor line management and respect of peoole's time (ignoring when they arrived and their timeslot) caused a completely needless 2H+ wait before being able to enter and get ID verified and scanned :(
even when you got inside, and that was after more than 1H wait already, it still took another hour or so
finally upstairs, ready for security and luggage scan
once up things were finally good, but it sucked to have arrived 2h30 early just to wait 2h30 in a slow line to get in
finally!
welcome!
Aqua Theatre
Promenade
Eric Prydz/Pryda
crossdresser lunch
it started raining on day 2, it was nice for lights and lasers
it got pretty
poor Mark Sixma got rained out as the rain became more severe
Labadee, Haiti
Yes, the boat did go somewhere, I mapped it and checked :)
While I will note that it felt a bit weird to boat an entire 2 days to get to Labadee, Haiti a mere 4H before the boat had to leave and boat 2 days back to Miami, at the same time I'm sure it would also have been weird at least for some, to be on a boat that went nowhere (it would have been fine by me, haha).
Haiti is a troubled country that is kind on the "do not travel" list, but we went on a private beach in a way that we never really entered the country (so no need for passports and so forth, which was nice). They did a good job sheltering us from all of this, and making it a welcoming party island with some fun rides when we came to visit.
I'll admit that getting up to make it to the island was a tad challenging when you had been partying all night the night before, but we made it :)
welcome!
they had a market but the sellers were way too aggressive, that was a turn off
Zipline:
Rollercoaster:
Beach Party:
The beach party was fun, but way too short (barely 4H)
Groovecruise Days 3-4: Peak Partying
Back to the ship, for lots of partying and a very long night until sunrise:
When 6 lions is not enough, and 8 lions is clearly too many, seven lions!
Abraxis with Dimibo and Blastoyz!
then Blastoyz took over
great job with the decors, confetti, lights and pyro!
After good times at Amber Theatre, went to see Daxson on the 8th floor until sunrise. Not much of a trance set, but lots of energy:
Then it was try for sunrise, although it was cloudy:
Day4 started a bit later when you go to bed around 07:30 :) Going to catch lunch somewhere before lunch closed, was work enough :) After that, trance night was by the swimming pool on deck 15, but it was pretty cold and windy as the boat was sailing back towards Miami:
Then back to Amber theatre for some lovely base, DnB, psytrance, and epic B2Bs:
Groovecruise Days 5: Rough Trip Back to Reality
By then, it was far enough in the night that it was really Day 5 already. While the party was still going strong at 03:00, knowing that we'd be rudely woken up around 07:xx and kicked off the boat, made it less appealing to stay much longer (even as is, and as fantastic as the entire experience was, monday morning was very rough).
Sadly it didn't matter whether you stayed on the boat (some booked the next cruise to stay), everyone got woken up by a "good morning Vietnam" message from I believe John, who runs GC, and as lovely as the message was, I was so not awake and shaken by the wakeup that I struggled to find any way to turn the room speaker off, and didn't find any.
From there, it was a suite of announcements on how to get off the boat, as soon as possible, while I was struggling to pack and vacate said room as quickly as possible (as it had to be cleaned and made ready for the next trip leaving later that afternoon).
The line out was long but not as bad as the way in (maybe 30mn?) but it was challenging since I opted to drag my full luggage since it was simply not going to be ready that previous night by 22:00, deadline for luggage pickup. On the way out, we had to go through US immigration again, but since they have our IDs and pictures, it was a quick glance at a face recognition camera before being waved through.
I was able to find Adam Scott/Adam Levine to thank him for the great music just before leaving
Thoughts and Conclusions
I'll start with a few random things as a first timer, aka virgin:
This was the first time GC was going to use this new boat, and they did a beyond fantastic job getting everything decked out and getting all the stages festival quality with very little time to setup and teardown.
For those who like alcohol the pre-paid drink package was the way to go, but sadly they forced you to get it for all members of a given cabin, which was not fair to those who don't drink, and probably cost the boat some amount of such sales
The all you can drink soda package for around $90 for 4 days was still overpriced but simple enough to get as an alternative. They had cups with RFID tags that got recognized by the soda machines before deciding to dispense, or not. Places that had bars would just serve you soda by request when showing your seacard.
The internet package, also around $100, I can't say if that's expensive or average, but of course there is no competition. I did get it, but the wifi on the boat was totally overwhelmed in multiple locations, so you couldn't connect to either the ship wifi to talk to other guests, or to the internet if you had it. Obviously I still posted a bunch of IG stories, but a fair amount had to be done "blind" and were uploaded a fair amount later when wifi/internet became available in some other boat location.
As mentioned earlier, given how little time we spent in Labadee, I would have been fine if the boat went nowhere and was plugged into shore power, but that's just me :) (and yes, that's to say that the GC did such a great job with parties on the boat, that the outside didn't matter much)
The food in regular restaurants/buffets was on the disappointing side, but honestly I didn't care too much. I didn't really need to get fat on this cruise :) (but many attendees noted this and did not love it). Also, lack of food options between 22:00 and 06:30, was indeed an issue for people partying all night.
checkout was very rough (getting up after very little sleep and being strongly and repeated encouraged to leave the boat for the poor staff that only had hours to clean everything and get rooms ready for people coming for the next cruise later that day). I would have loved to be able to check out peacefully end of day on monday evening.
Should you go? Would I go Back?
While I don't have official numbers, it looks like the return rate for Groove Cruise is very high, and that's for good reason. I was impressed by how many things the crew did right, and things I was worried about were not much of an issue.
Fantastic job decorating the boat and decking out the stages
Attendees were the best, and the most costumed I had ever seen anywhere
security was just what was needed, nothing more, never an issue, and I never felt like I had to "fight" to be there or be able to enjoy myself in a PLUR way.
The morning announcements while really lovely were also very painful if you happened to be sound asleep. I think it it would be crucial to tell everyone how to turn off those speakers if they really need to sleep.
4 days go by quickly, I wouldn't have been upset with another day or two :)
there was a fair amount of stuff to do on the boat outside of partying
there was trance! I hate to have to say this, but too many festivals are dropping trance. Even untold which was a trance heaven for a festival of all EDM genres, severely reduced the amount of trance last year :-//
Is it worth flying across the world for? Yes. It's actually a long flight from SFO, and I didn't regret it. I think it's almost the same distance from Paris or London :)
Generally, the team really cares, they go above and beyond, and even after 20-ish years, they are still humble and always want to try their best and improve. This is huge, too many festivals rest or their laurels, or "it's just a job" and the experience is nowhere the same. This kind of culture is crucial for the best experiences, and only at insomniac festivals have I seen something similar.
And you're going to ask: Isn't it expensive?
So, yes, it's not cheap, around $1500 to $2000 per person, but it includes:
4 days of music with up to 10 stages, mostly non stop
all the amenities of a cruise ship if they appeal to you
your room is about 10mn away, you can go back and forth any time you want. This is priceless! I really need to emphasize how awesome that part is and how alone it's worth the bit of extra money.
food, it was not fantastic food, but it's right there and included. Again, convenience was great.
island excursion was nice, even if short
To me, this is not that much more than what I would spend at EDC with VIP tickets + hotel + food and I felt the experience was close enough to VIP like. The crowds were also more mature and more PLUR than the average festival, and that was a good thing to me. Ok, the stages are not to the level of a real EDC or Beyond Wonderland-like festival, but they were good enough for me to have lots of fun.
All in all, I was very satisfied and felt it was well worth the price. Clearly plenty of people seem to agree as more people are going every year and they keep having to migrate to a bigger ship (another bigger one even for next year and this year's was already one of the biggest on the market).
I will leave you with a few links:
While groovecruise was not in the cards for me for a bunch of prior years due to conflicting events and priorities, I also regret not having gone sooner, it's a pretty awesome event. If you already have been, you know. If you have not, take my word for it, it is cool and unique (and has lots of styles of music, most I didn't have time to go see).
If you'd like to sign up for next year: canonical page to sign up for 2026. And you get a small extra discount with ledtranceguy
So, you would think that as part of my complicated LED outfit that was several years of work over the years including over 10,000 lines of code, the shoes would not be a big deal...
Well, after having gone through more than 10 different pairs of LED shoes that all failed in various ways, I have to say that these were more trouble than expected.
Issues:
the early ones had wires or PCB between the pixels that would break after the shoe was bent many times as part of walking/dancing
later ones fixed this, but still used the same small module with limited battery life, barely good enough for 4H
even unmodified, the LED module resin would eventually crack, and usually the battery fail
worst failure was a lipo that did fail in a way that it smoked/burnt, not great under your feet (thankfully this was contained and my foot was ok)
the only way to add battery life was to solder a connector to the lipo pins inside the module, which is a bit tricky (getting a good sodler joint) and not getting that connection to fail later, which with dancing does happen too often* then, my first design which included adding a 2nd battery inside the shoe, turned out to be a mistake as the 2nd battery was not protected well and would eventually be breached. Also the thin wires for the orignal batteries I used woudl also fail:
I had to melt the resin until I could expose the power pins
looked ok on the bench, did not work long in the shoe
shoving the battery in was not easy
it worked on the bench, but didn't work too long in real life, by then I added an external lipo plug to check the voltage and do fast charge, bypassing USB
By then, I had what I thought was a great idea: why don't I just forget about secondary batteries and use the external connector to power my shoes from my pants that already have 5V power on the neopixels?
This felt like a good idea, but first I had to add diodes to drop 0.7V so as not to exceed 4.3V for a direct connection to the lipo (as a remminder, I cannot connect via the USB plug as if you send power there, the shoe does in charging mode and stops lighting up), but then I found out that my neopixel strips did not actually have 5V at the end due to line loss, and it was going to be complex to safely connect them to my shoes without a voltage regulator and more electronics, making the whole thing, questionable. Still, it was a tempting idea for a short while to use my mega battery pack to power the shoes forever ;)
So for version 4, I had slightly better connection of the external lipo connection with hot glue around the module, but the more important part is I figured out it was better to attach a flat lipo on top of the shoe so it wouldn't get stepped on:
I also had spare modules and batteries in case of failure, and a way to charge them from USB outside the shoe:
By then I had run out of my old modules that slowly failed over time, and had to find a new shoe with compatible modules. Thankfully that one has slightly better firmware that allowed lighting one LED out of two:
at least it's pretty
A big thanks to IGxx for nicely sending me extra modules so I could hack on them and have spares. Here is the shoe I recommend you buy today: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GS6GSRY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is the new shoe with the updated module. Very pretty shoe, but otherwise the modules still have the same 4h runtime, and still need the same work, bummer:
battery goes up there so it's not stepped on
So yeah, we're now at v4, it still relies on unreliable soldering, and extra hot glue but at least the external wires are stronger, the external battery more than long enough for 12H+ of runtime
I had such a great time last year for Rebooted - Trance Made in Sheffield 2023 that I was excited to learn that Scott Bond organized another one for this year, and thankfully I was able to come back from Paris this year.
I was on the fence as to whether to get to Sheffield via Eurostar + 2 trains, or just fly to Manchester and go from there. Flying last year worked out well, but this year, very long lines in CDG, and terrible weather that caused icing and 3.5h delay on an 1.5h flight :(
Unfortuantely that caused me to arrive 2H late at network:
by then the line wasn't super long, but the searches were thorough and slow, welcome to the UK :(
Finally got in, just in time for the end of Craig Lee Bird:
Of course, got to meet some friends who had arrived a while ago already:
and I was able to properly meet Scott Bond this time around and thank him for his hospitality
Lange, was next:
hell yes!
great job on the lasers
woot!
Then Scott Bond and Charlie Walker took over:
ready!
Of course, excited to see Craig again :)
And Craig Lee Bird closed the night:
It was then time to migrate to record junkee for more trance :)
And if you wanted to compare with DS at QM vs DS at NOS, you can go read this Dreamstate Socal 2022.
If you like this report, and want to see others/future ones, you can go on these pages:
Passport (for insomniac event subscribers) was back:
they had meet and greets
Passport was actually the 6th stage with a secret lineup for both days
Dream VIP lost the covered area, but still had nice booths:
Lots of booths:
this time offered heli rides from not somewhere not that far. I'm not sure if they saved any time or were worth it. Please leave comments in the links at the top of this page if you used them
The Void: Still Across the a street, not that easy to get to
Getting to void was the same as last year (and by that I mean inconvenient and 'too far'), although the tunnel was prettier;
boring during the day
nice at night
tunnel to get back, people said it felt slippery and tough to climb when you were tired and altered
So, before people accuse of me #firstworldproblems, the tunel and bridge were a real mental "too far" thing that many reported to me, and that I felt myself.
Some different art this year:
Views from the boat, were great:
what it looks inside
And if you were wondering about sound inside the boat, it depends where your room is, but there you go:
Nice to see the venue late at night/early morning:
People
As always, a big part of what makes US insomniac events so much fun is the people who are part of the party.
it was nice and sunny during the day (until it got very cold just hours later)
Props to Jose, barefoot photographer for all his shots
and also Thorgodofbass, our favorite videographer
Ulrich!
TFSF crew
More fun at night, as always:
And of course, fun totems:
So, due to my LED outfit and the tech I carry/wear, things break but I'm also a McGuyver, so I carry spares and repair tools. Funny thing was a totem that got damaged, the owner asked me "I heard you have a soldering iron", and I had to reply "I'm sorry, I don't have one, I have two" :)
we got it fixed
woohoo, it's working again
We took some Trancefamily pictures:
Big props to the insomniac entertainers, always adding to the party:
oh no, they didn't have batteries for their lights this year ;)
Thanks for taking pictures with us:
Also shout out to ground control:
As always, it's a great opportunity to meet DJs:
JoC
Miyuki and Richard Durand
Astrix
Craig Connelly
Allen Watts
Armin!
RAM
first time meeting Darude!
Fadi after his wonderful set in the rain
Mark Sixma
Orjan Nilsen
Paul Oakenfold
OMG, got to meet Judge Jules from the Essential Mixes I used to listen to in early 2000s from napster
Sean Tyas, having such a great time
Also great to see Alex Morph again
Day 1
DS opened a bit late on the first day, Queen with Mr Brooks was a bit empty
Xijaro and Pitch
nice visuals at vision
Craig Connelly
Sequence was pretty packed
Because Astrix ;)
GO debuted Octagon at DS
Armnin was next (which sadly meant missing Blastoyx b2b Infected Mushroom, my biggest regret of the night)
thank you for adding the lasers
Day 1 Summary Video:
Day 1: Queen Mary Afterparty
TDJ!
And that was it for Day 1, headed back to hotel around 04:00
So if anyone wonders, lots of lights means lots of batteries and things to charge every night:
new bigger 1S lipo batteries for my hat
and more
Ah yes, and did I mention re-soldering broken LEDs, and hot glue gun? :)
Day 2
Back for Day #2, it was hard to be there at 13:00 ;)
thankfully made it to Khromata
it was early for most
Also got to see my friend Triode
Aly and Fila in the light rain, was majestic:
So much joy to enjoy Ferry Corsten - Gouryella, again:
the super tall flags were annoying, they messed up a lot of my pictures
finished the night with Above and Beyond
Above and Beyond:
Day 2: Queen Mary Afterparty
After 01:00, it was time to migrate to the boat:
Ruben again!
Finished the night with Ferry Corsten, who even finished his set with some drum and bass ;)
f
Day 2 Summary Video:
Weather concerns with QM vs NOS
So, I am biased and I still prefer NOS once you're inside the venue (San Bernardino is not great, but once you're inside NOS, it's real wonderland), but the weather aspect is a concern for QM. Both years, QM had rain, NOS did not. NOS is inland in a somewhat arid area, QM is by the water, and even when it wasn't raining, everything was kind of wet due to dew (very high water concentration in the air that would condense on chairs and so forth).
this is what I meant, by dew, almost fog to the ground
So, the relentless light rain that fell mostly all day on day #2, made the lasers on dream look dreamy indeed, but at the same time I was soaked by the end of the day, and my gopro literally had water inside and was barely rescued after several days in rice. Water and electricity aren't friends, this can't be easy on all the gear (although I didn't see anything that failed due to water).
yes, it was pretty :)
The rain was manageable this year, but I need to state again that last year got pissing rain in the middle of the night while we were on the boat party, and if that rain had been just a few hours earlier, it would have ruined the event. This just makes me nervous, Interstellar was entirely cancelled for freak weather, I honestly would prefer for DS to be back at NOS, if only for the more reliable weather.
If DS is to stay at QM, I hope Insomniac plans for full covered spaces to deal with heavy rain if it happens. Of course, this is already present at NOS for 3 out of the 4 stages (2 with megastructures and one indoors)
Aftermath and Conclusion: Should this not be 3 days and with a bit more sleep?
Haha, I just realized this is the same thing I wrote last year. Since last year was too much music with 4 stages and music from 17:00 to 01:00 and then until 06:00 on the boat, Insomniac heard this, and fixed it by:
still two days
added a 5th stage, the art car, with very good trance :)
well, if you could passport, it was really 6 different stages. Insane!
now started at 13:00, making it 12H plus 5h afterparty, 17h per day, so there you go, it's fixed :)
like last year, the long days created casualties :)
So yeah, suck it up people and your FOMO, here's even more music you won't all be able to see and even less sleep, haha :)
It was literally 34h of music, which is usually what you get from a 3 day festival with 3 to 5 stages, a lot indeed. I would personally still prefer 3 shorter days to have more of a chance to see more artists and not miss as much (especially for all the sets that were not recorded), but it is #firstworldproblems :)
The afterparty on the boat helped seeing some artists if you had missed them during the day, but even then it was 3 stages that were not that close from one another, and honestly how stayed up until 06:00 both nights while having started at 13:00? I barely made it for the first sets on the 2nd day :)
For completeness, I did a survey, got 580 responses, and about half the people would like 3 days at QM instead of 2. That's a lot, but not the majority, just half
While I was at it, I also asked about QM vs NOS, and while many people like me prefer NOS for the better footprint, the megastructures, and so forth, more people prefered QM for being closer to them (traffic in LA), and feeling safer outside.
Notes / Thoughts for this year:
This year had more daylight hours, which was a bit rough on DJs who were opening, and made costumes/outfits a bit more challenging (it was pretty warm during the day, but got very chily at night, including wind chill). Sure, it would be nice to have more hours at night, but with a curfew of 01:00 on the venue (vs 02:00 for NOS), the options are limited outside of making this a 3 day festival, which I'm surely down, for ;)
Void unfortunately was still "so close but yet so far" across a bridge that was dicey for some, or an underground tunnel that was a bit of a detour when going from dream to void.
I didn't feel it was easier to get to Void, the venue is very challenging layout, only so much can be done with that location
I missed the animated burning man LED art from last year, there was still art this year though
Dream VIP was shrunk somewhat and lost the covered spaces, which was unfortunate given the rain
As stated above, if DS is to stay at QM, I hope insomniac adds covered spaces to deal with rain.
Sound at Vision was much improved despite the challenging location. Not sure how they did it, but it was better
I still miss the NOS megastructures, but dream got improved a fair bit this year. The added lasers were beautiful
Dream was just beautiful
beautiful front and back
I still wish we could use the passenger terminal dome, looks like a sweet venue:
Should you go? Would I go Back?
Don't let some of my observations/suggestions confuse you from the fact that this was another fantastic Dreamstate and I had so much fun, and so did everyone I talked to
I missed so many sets I wanted to see, I don't know how many sets were recorded, but I missed many I wanted to see and I was there almost every of hour
Insomniac improved some things at QM this year, not that last year was bad to start with ;) and continued to show that, within reason with layout issues (the street cutting off Void from the rest of the festival), they can do incredible things with a mere parking lot.
I'll repeat like each time, that the insomniac team has the most relentless overachievers I've ever seen. I'm thankful we have them.
Security continued to nice overall, they did ask for backpacks to be transparent this year, which is spreading and understandable. I guess we probably don't want people to walk around with big black backpacks that could have anything inside if somehow they made it past security
I'll continue to give the same answer to "Is it worth flying across the world for?" If you like trance and you want a better production value than many european shows (not counting Tomorrowland, but TMRL sucks for trance), yes, it is worth going to. Only 2 days, but it's really good and the night decors and costumes are much better than what you'll find in Europe.
As parting words, I made a summary video of over 100 Instagram Stories I took during the event, enjoy:
π
2024-11-20 01:01
in Clubbing, Electronics, Festivals
Tech specs:
32x16 flexible LED rgbpanel (displaying scrolling Dreamstate Logo)
2 strings of Ray Wu P15 WS2812 both for layout reasons and for backup if one string breaks, the other one will keep working.
Lipo battery checker (but the lipos are protected, so they will self shut down)
flexible 16x32 RGBpanel
found a hat big enough that it mostly fits on it
of course, it needed a few LEDs :)
what it looked inside and it worked with a small 1S 700mAh lipo (although not long enough)
bigger battery upgrade, and BTW those batteries lie, they are only 1600mAh
testing battery draw, a bit over 0.5A which is a bit too much
So, why 3-4V lipos instead of USB battery packs with 5V that is expected by both the panels and neopixels/WS2812? Well, space is limited, USB battery packs are kind of big, and carry extra hardware to recharge that isn't needed inside the hat. There is also a side byproduct that powering both the panels and the LEDs with a lower voltage, limits their brightness and the amount of power (watts) they need, which means that a 16Wh lipo inside a USB battery pack stepped up to 5V, makes everyting brighter, but only lasts about half as long as powering directly from the lipo at lower voltage.
bigger 4Ah 1S lipo worked for 8H at full power and LEDs worked all the way down to 2.8V!
panel worked all the way down to 3.4A before colors went wrong, 16H on a 1.6Ah battery
of course now I had to find a buy a faster 1S lipo charger with the right connectors (had to get JST adapters)
quick test that a smaller 700mAh battery would last around 5H before things got dim
After testing, I was able to confirm that both the $7 amazon controller (SP002E from https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09Y8SWJ77 ) and the RGBpanels, work fine with lower voltages (which is not a given since both run a microcontroller that was originally meant to be powered from 5V).
The RGBPanel controller is a bit more picky about voltage and reboots around 3.5V, while the neopixels tend to drag the battery voltage down, causing the RGBPanel to crash and reboot when a single battery runs both, so I gave it its own lipo.
Pixels still take 0.3 to 0.5A (I use a potentiometer to dial them down as the cheap controller I put has no dimming control) and the RGBPanel takes less than 0.1A, so that's nice (it actually goes all the way down to 0.05A or just 50mA) when the voltage drops.
The combined tricks should give around 18H of runtime with the 2 batteries (4Ah and 1.5Ah 1S lipos), which is enough for 17 hours of dreamstate (they are not screwing around this time, 17H !!!)
About the neopixel controller, I used a cheap $7 amazon controller that only had 3 physical buttons but sadly no dimming control, mostly because I wanted something very small, and while pixelblaze micro is also small, it doesn't have the pattern I want, and I didn't see the point of programming a pattern I already had on the other controller, so I just put a potentiometer to lower the voltage. It's obviously the wrong way to do it, but it works :)
Here is the end result:
As far as trips back in memory lane, go, this was a winner. Orbital are OGs in the electronic music world. After Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis, they were likely the 3rd electronic music act I listened to, way back when. It's very hard to define their genre, especially since they predate most EDM genres, but I've seen "industrial electro funk" although Halycon and on is definitely it's own genre still (more ambient).
The event was organized by Goldenvoice. The flier didn't have any info on whether they were going to be OTC, have openers, or until what time the event was running. The only piece of info was that it was supposed to start at 21:00. By the time I arrived at 22:00, wary of previous events announced at 21:00 but having so-so openers, or sometimes not even really opening doors until 22:00, but this time around they apparently did open at 21:00 and Orbital themselves did start at 21:00, go figure...
So, I missed the first hour, but they were going strong by the time I arrived:
not every time you see this
The somewhat weird thing is they stopped in the middle of the set after saying something I was unable to comprehend due to poor microphone sound, but they took a 20mn break where they just left the stage and everyone in the room, and came back 20mn later :)
The 2nd half of the show had more top tracks, including of course the Halcyon and on, but plenty more including "where times becomes a loop" that I had totally forgotten about:
the room was packed
one of them performed without shoes :)
The show ended at 00:40. Definitely good time were had:
It had been a while since I had seen Jason Ross, so it was good news when I heard he was coming back at Midway SF.
What wasn't expected, was that it would be in a side building which was mostly a hangar party, for some reason they were badly lacking bathrooms, so there was a 30mn bathroom line, which was not good.
The lineup felt a bit all over the place in that there was no real unity in the music style, and I found myself waiting for Jason to take over, which he did at 0:30. I had a good time for the remaining 90mn.
Glad to be back, and even more delighted to have seen my friend Kepik rise the ranks to the level that he is now opening for Seven Lions. Great job Kepik!
Plenty of people showed up:
they even had costumed performers
Glad to see plenty of friends:
kandi masters :)
Of course, I didn't arrive naked either :)
One special treat indoors is you could get tatoos:
The party also had DJs playing in the main room, so you could hop back and forth:
Gem & Tauri
And before long, Seven Lions took mainstage outside and closed the day party:
After the day party was over, the afterparty continued inside Midway until 02:00, good times for all.
Video Summary:
It's glad to be back, my first show in the bay area in months after being gone travelling for festivals.
I'll be honest that the anjuna lineup felt a bit random, lack of cohesion in the type of music, so some I really liked, some I had a hard time enjoying.
Lovely running into a lot of friends I hadn't seen in a while:
