Woodstock it wasn’t


Wow. The Fyre Festival didn’t look at all interesting to me, but it seems to have suckered a lot of people. It was a music festival with only one band I’d ever heard of, and all the advertising seems to have revolved around photos of young women in bikinis. “The unparalleled best in music, cuisine, design & hospitality on a private island in the Exumas”, they said. And then

Fyre Festival set out to provide a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience on the Islands of the Exumas.

Due to circumstances out of our control, the physical infrastructure was not in place on time and we are unable to fulfill on that vision safely and enjoyably for our guests. At this time, we are working tirelessly to get flights scheduled and get everyone off of Great Exuma and home safely as quickly as we can. We ask that guests currently on-island do not make their own arrangements to get to the airport as we are coordinating those plans. We are working to place everyone on complimentary charters back to Miami today; this process has commenced and the safety and comfort of our guests is our top priority.

The festival is being postponed until we can further assess if and when we are able to create the high- quality experience we envisioned.

We ask for everyone’s patience and cooperation during this difficult time as we work as quickly and safely as we can to remedy this unforeseeable situation. We will continue to provide regular updates via email to our guests and via our official social media channels as they become available.

The Fyre Festival team did become accomplished masters of understatement, though.

Blink 182 cancelled, because they’d never been paid. Which is strange, because tickets were exorbitantly priced.

Festival-goers paid anywhere from $450 for a no-frills day pass to up to $250,000 for the full VIP experience. One widely-advertised festival package cost $12,000. There were even packages that included a private yacht.

That’s a whole different world, there. People paid thousands of dollars to fly to a desert island in the Bahamas for a weekend of luxury. I’m straining to pay a few hundred dollars to visit Cincinnati for a science conference. Really, don’t go into teaching or science if you want to get rich.

But at least I didn’t get robbed. The Festival turned out to be soggy disaster tents, squares of cheese on plain bread, no music, and evacuation flights. It does provide a rich mine of schadenfreude, though.

Luxury! Music! Cuisine! Hospitality!

Comments

  1. kayden says

    If you love snark, the #fyrefestival hashtag is hilarious. I suppose Ja Rule and the other promoters are going to get hit with a huge lawsuit for all this messiness.

  2. The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge says

    If it weren’t for Schaden, I’d have no Freude at all nowadays….

  3. jrkrideau says

    /Fyre Festival set out to provide a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience on the Islands of the Exumas.

    Why are people complaining. Clearly Fyre Festival delivered. People just did not read the fine print that said “satisfaction is not guaranteed”.

  4. anbheal says

    Awww. Libertarian dudebros ripped off other .001 percenter Libertarian dude-bros. That’s the free market at work. Where’s the love?