Fyre Festival Debacle – what actually happened
Fyre Festival is up in smoke!
A luxurious high-end event called Fyre Festival was set to grace the white beaches of Exuma in the Bahamas over this past weekend. With tickets ranging from $4000 to $12000 attendees were promised a festival like no other.
Fyre Festival advertised a certain standard of festival experience. Chartered flights to the island, luxury cabanas, 5-star food and top-notch musical acts were promised to attendees and at $12000 I would expect nothing less.
Instead, attendees arrived on the island to a dishevelled lot covered in gravel. The tents were half set up and not quite of the cabana standard promised.
In case you’re wondering, those “cabanas” are actually disaster relief tents.#fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/jaZpkIKVT2
— Matt Halfhill (@MattHalfhill) April 28, 2017
The food offered to guests was also sub-par, especially for the price of tickets.
The dinner that @fyrefestival promised us was catered by Steven Starr is literally bread, cheese, and salad with dressing. #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/I8d0UlSNbd
— Tr3vor (@trev4president) April 28, 2017
The musical acts set to play included the likes of Skepta, Disclosure Rae Stremmend. Legendary band Blink 182 was also set to play but cancelled to due to the negligent state of the festival.
To top things off organisers then cancelled the event and sent guests back to Miami, which resulted in flight delays and then flight cancellation of the unknowing guests still on route to the luxury event.
Festival Fyre, up in smoke.
Billy McFarland
Hosted by Ja Rule and 25-year-old tech entrepreneur Billy McFarland, it is evident that they are inexperienced to say the least.
In an interview with Rolling Stone McFarland talks about how Exuma is lacking in terms of infrastructure like water and sewerage and how they had to try build a city out of barely nothing.
On the morning of the event a bad storm came in and destroyed some of the tents as well as busting water pipes and wreaking havoc on flight schedules.
They admit that they were “a little ambitious.”
Surely one would do the proper research before ‘hosting’ such a large-scale event in a different country that’s not easily accessible. Outside planners warned them that the festival would not be to the standard advertised.
Everyone knows that ‘first events’ have mishaps and plenty of them, but Fyre Festival seems like a joke. They are refunding all patrons and are starting planning for next year’s Fyre Festival, which McFarland says will “be not just music, but all forms of entertainment.”
Seems like they are once again setting the bar a bit high, let’s hope that Fyre Festival will bring the heat instead of burning to ashes.
