Fyre Fest 2.0?

Like many people when I saw the line up schedule for October 22nd 2022 in Las Vegas for When We Were Young I was so excited I didn’t know what to do. I immediately sent the flyer to some friends to see if they had seen the announcment and try to figure out how we were getting tickets. All of my feeds on social media were full of people talking about the festival and it’s insane lineup filled with so much nostalgia. With 60 bands all set to play in one day in one place, most of which so many of my generation grew up listening to there was no way I could miss this festival.

The morning tickets went on sale I woke up with plenty of time to make sure I had the website loaded on my laptop, 2 iPads and my phone. I absolutely had to get these tickets and I knew the servers would be flooded with so many people doing the same thing. The ticket link finally went live and I tried and tried and tried to secure VIP tickets for my party but as expected with a line up this wild they sold out in seconds. I managed to secure a few GA+ tickets (a tier that was supposed to come with more perks than a regular general admission ticket but not as many perks as VIP) for my party and so we began planning our trip to Vegas.

With so many people excited for this festival you could also imagine how many people weren’t so excited. We’ve all heard the stories about 2017s Fyre Fest and the comparisons to what could be the greatest emo festival of all time were pouring in. As someone that works in production I know at least a little bit of the complications large festivals like these can face and some of the challenges that come with them. 60 bands in one day on 5 stages? Sure it’s tight but it’s possible, especially when every stage was staffed by pro crews that are used to doing these kinds of events. Let’s not forget these are all professionally touring bands and not your typical Tuesday night 8 band show at the local dive bar. There’s obviously going to be some technical difficulties given the amount of bands and the limited time they have so to expect a perfect show from every band would have been a little unreasonable so I was still ready to go.

Tickets for the show sold out within minutes and Live Nation quickly announced the addition of a second day for the festival immediately following the first day. With so many great bands playing and so many people still interested in going why not? Immediately the second show sold out just like the first and Live Nation again announced another additional day the following weekend. For many festival goers this was a little strange to see the same exact line up 2 weekends in a row with the only option being single day tickets. Very quickly my social media feeds were again flooded with comparisons to Fyre Fest as well as many band members who were scheduled to perform the festival speaking about not knowing they were even playing until the flyer was out. I wouldn’t say it’s unheard of since all of the bands playing the fest all have booking agents and many of them on record labels that negotiate their bookings for them.

With 3 days of When We Were Young now sold out music fans were turning to the internet to look for tickets for resale. Sites like stub hub did have tickets for sale if you were lucky to get onto them quick enough but ticket prices were soon almost quadruple the price they originally sold for. There were so many red flags about this festival it was easy to understand how the conflicted so many people were about buying tickets right away and it was a shame so many people lost access to resale tickets due to how sky high the prices went.

After purchasing my tickets for the festival WWWY opened up the option for press and photographers to apply for photo passes like most festivals do. Typically when I photograph bands I go directly through their press agents and have never shot a festival before so the application process was a little new to me. I applied all though I already paid for tickets, no shock I was declined months later since 476 Productions isn’t a major media outlet but I did lose time contacting bands I’ve worked with in the past and lost out on a great opportunity. I shoot almost every show I attended that I’m not already working so attending a concert without my camera and not standing behind and audio console was going to be so weird for me. It was looking like I’d be heading to Vegas on an actual vacation.

Like many people that bought tickets to this festival I was feeling the financial pressure not only the high ticket prices but like any major event airline price and hotel prices rocketed. I joined some WWWY Facebook groups since I heard so many people were discussion some ways to save money and sharing tips on what to expect in Vegas during the festival. Quickly I noticed so many stories of people’s Air BnB cancelling on them and finding them reposted for inflated prices and so many people that were looking to unload their tickets simply due to not being able to afford the trip itself. Overall there was a great sense of community in the Facebook groups that were made by fans themselves and it was a great place to look for information like the leaked set times or the map of the festival grounds well in advance. Seeing so many people excited about this festival gave my party so much to look forward too. Fyre Fest? I don’t think so. Even if this festival didn’t happen we’d still be staying in a hotel not too far away from the festival grounds in one of the top vacation spots in the US. The Risk was worth it, right?

We arrived in Las Vegas on the Wednesday before the festival. We wanted to make sure we had some time to adjust to jet lag and have some other vacation experience as well as attended all of the awesome “sideshows” many of the bands playing the festival announced. While we did some typical tourist stuff and gambled a little at the casino in our hotel we had been there to go see some live music. On Friday the 21st we bought tickets to the quickly selling out Brooklyn Bowl event “Strange 90’s” booked by none other than the creator of Warped Tour himself Kevin Lyman. This show was filled with the recently reunited The Summer Set, Sleeping With Sirens and Story of The Year as well as having special guests and performances such as members of Bowling for Soup and Goldfinger. This even was a ton of fun and fit right into the nostalgia of the weekend. The toughest thing about going to this show was the fact that I was having so much fun I didn’t want to go back to my hotel and get some sleep like I probably should have the day before a 12 hour long festival. Seeing some of my favorite bands perform had me so excited for the festival the next day and had me thinking how crazy the people comparing WWWY to Fyre fest were and what I great “I told you so” moment it would be to tell my memories from the weekend.

Here it finally is! The morning of the fest. We got up early to make sure we could get down to the festival grounds in time to not have to wait in a crazy long line. Thankfully we had purchased those GA+ tickets with one of the benefits being to have a separate line so we knew the wait shouldn’t be too bad. In anticipation to surging Uber and Lyft rates we decided to hop on the monorail since it had a stop a quick walk from the festival grounds. While we were on the monorail filled with people dressed in their carefully planned outfits heading for the best most nostalgic day they could hope for, a member of my party got a call from some friends who were already in line. We were just an hour away from the doors being open and guess what, When We Were Young is CANCELLED. While we all just looked at each other, some of the other riders started looking at their phones and there were screams and groans and people screaming that it was true. The fest was cancelled.

All of that time planning and saving money to make this trip possible. All of the people that travel for days from different countries. All of the people that drove across the country and slept in their car because they couldn’t afford flights or hotels but couldn’t miss this once in a life time opportunity all receiving the most disappointed news they could hear. Unfortunately Las Vegas is prone to having high winds this time of year. With the combination of high winds and a hurricane off the west coast our festival trip was doomed for failure. The forecast had called for wind gust of up to 60mph. If you know anything about outdoor events you know that there was no way the show could go on. Every stage at the festival grounds was a temporary installation and was not built to withstand winds of that force. We kept heading toward the festival grounds to meet up with our friends and figure out the next best thing to do. There were so many mixed emotions going on looking around at all of the music fans outside of the gates. There were so many tears and confused people but there were also people attempting to have lighter spirits about it and we even saw someone crowd surf down the sidewalk! I was very impressed overall with how people handled the news of anti climatic trip to Vegas. There were not riots, no violence, I didn’t notice anyone trying to jump any barricades trying to get into the grounds or anything negative. Even with so many people so understandably upset it was pretty calm. Unsure of what to do people did look for Live Nation staff to ask if they would be able to switch their tickets to the following day event or at least go to the box office which was located inside the festival grounds to ask some questions but no one was allowed in since the cancellation had come at the direction of the Las Vegas government. I get it, it was a legitimate safety concern. However, why was the box office located inside the venue with no access? Why were some Live Nation security guards telling people they could just show up the next day and their GA+ and VIP wrist bands would get them in? I applaud Live Nation for taking safety so seriously especially after the Astroworld tragedy but why were there now answers or cancellation contingencies? Thankfully for my party we did purchase our tickets through the official seller of the festival and purchased insurance so we knew we’d at least get the price of the tickets back to us eventually but what about everyone that didn’t? Well…I have to applaud live nation again for releasing an official statement again offering refunds within 30 days to the people that were unable to attend Saturdays event.

Since we were getting a refund we decided to hop online and try to find anyone selling tickets to Sunday’s show. Our flight was at 11:00pm so why not try to at least see some of the bands we came all the way out there to see. Facebook buy/sell groups were flooded with scammers taking peoples money and not actually sending any tickets so we decided to turn to stub hub. GA tickets were being sold for a little over face value so we decided to spend what little money we had left to try to get some. I guess everyone else had the same idea because during check out the site just kept refreshing to show higher and higher ticket prices before I could even type in my card information. Unfortunately it didn’t look like we were getting into WWWY 2022. Feeling defeated we turned to some of the Facebook groups we joined to see what other people were doing and we noticed so many of the bands that were scheduled to play that day started booking last minute free shows for their fans to attend all over the city. Not every band was able to put something together but so many were able to find last minute spots in hotel venues or small clubs around the city. Sadly we weren’t able to actually get into any of these shows either because they all immediately were at capacity and the hotels wouldn’t let anyone in unless you were a guest. We were so disappointed and ready to accept defeat when we saw some band members that couldn’t find places to play were hanging out some bars behind our hotel we decided to head over that way.

Emonight Brooklyn which had a sold out event that night at the Brooklyn Bowl ended up booking a last minute pre emonight show and thankfully we were able to purchase tickets for it right before it sold out and ended up heading right over there to get in line. Even though we didn’t get to see any live performances we got to see some DJ sets from The Ready Set, Four Year Strong and The Starting Line. It wasn’t quite the end of the trip we had expected but at least we had somewhere to go. We ended up having a great time on our Saturday night anyways and hats off to Emonight Brooklyn for figuring out something for something so last minute for some of the bands that couldn’t find a venue to play at.

Was When We Were Young 2022 just like Fyre Fest? No it wasn’t. All though our festival experience never happened, we were still staying on the Vegas strip with plenty of opportunity for food and entertainment even if it wasn’t what we were expecting. We were offered refunds for our tickets we didn’t get to use and weren’t left stranded on an Island with no cell service. Based on what I saw in some of the Facebook groups I had joined the second day was awesome. Fans were thrilled to see some of their favorite bands and hang out with their friends. There were some complaints about the sound and some said that some of the bands they wanted to see the most had feedback during their sets which is disappointing to hear. Some said the lines didn’t take too long to get in the door but VIP and GA+ didn’t have their own lines until through the gates of the festival which people were shocked they paid extra money to get. I saw posts stating the bathroom lines weren’t too bad but the merchandise and food lines were hours long and people drank more alcohol than water but overall their festival experience was great. All in all I wouldn’t compare WWWY to Fyre fest but I don’t think I’ll be grabbing tickets for next year.