Crowd control issues

[Northwestfire]

I also got caught up in the Arcadia/Park crush when Bonobo/Groove Armarda was on. I understand that it was at the point that Loyle Carner announced a surprise set at Rabbit Hole; this combined with people not realising Chemical Brothers had cancelled and Four Tet on the Park was always going to be an issue; it just wasn’t managed well at all. I had a panic attack onset and tried to leave Arcadia that way; the crush was by the toilets which didn’t help either. Found it safer to push back through the Arcadia and down to Silver Hayes.

There was a crush down the front post Lorde that wasn’t fun either; it seems that there’s a generational thing at play here too, I don’t think those who were 18 at Covid have experience of such crowds and are maybe lacking the maturity to let people out before they can get it. It certainly feels disrespectful.

Did anyone get caught at Camelphat at the Glade, it was the worst one for me. I had friends in tears, there was already an ambulance in there trying to get through. It had bottlenecked by the Dome. Generally had to fight to get out. 
 

Too many people for me, and too much of an expectation that people will “go elsewhere”.

[Earth_pig]

Yeah we all noticed some really overcrowding issues, hope they sort it for next time. Only blip on a brilliant time.

[FuzzyDunlop]

I didnt find it any busier than normal, but I didnt try to get to the front for anything all weekend.

Stewards at the bottom of the park definitely helped with crowd control.

The toilets at the top of the park / back of the stonebridge are a shambles though. Urinals that fit about 6 people in. The crush there was shambolic.

I avoided Camelphat at the Glade.. disaster crowd wise waiting to happen.

Edited June 28, 2022 by FuzzyDunlop

[prestonmike]

I know there are always queues on the Wednesday morning, but gate A seemed particularly bad this year, would make sense to separate out the coach arrivals from the car arrivals and have them enter through a different entrance, or even add a 5th entrance somewhere else around the site to try to reduce the queues

[kaytee...]

I've noticed that a lot of people are dismissing other people's complaints this year as just moaning for nothing. Especially on the Facebook groups, people telling others not to bother trying for tickets for raising genuine concerns. 

Glasto isn't untouchable, just because they've been going this long there's always room to improve. Primavera this year had a lot of problems on the first day and they listened and sorted it out for the remainder of the festival. If Glasto ignores the overcrowding issues it could one day result in a dangerous situation. 

[FuzzyDunlop]

We went to Gate A as Gate D looked a shambles. We parked up at 5am ish & were straight to the Zig Zags. We were in by 9 (to say the festival opened at 8, I thought that was decent)

2 of our group arrived 30 mins after us... they got in at about half 11. Gate A as well. So we got lucky with the timings.

Edited June 28, 2022 by FuzzyDunlop

[Helsbels]

40 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

Yeah - front left of TLC was fine.

That's where I was, couldn't find my friends though so was on my own with about 10, 12 year old. Good to see young kids enjoying the festival

[Badlands]

I’ll maintain the view that the Park/Arcadia incident was dangerous and possibly negligent. But, that apart, whilst it was obviously busier, I didn’t think there was anything that I hadn’t seen before.

Theoretically, there’ll be a few complaining about the crowd who wouldn’t have been there in the first place if they didn’t up the capacity. We cannot have it both ways.

Bigger queues for toilets and food but with a better chance of going? Aye, I’ll take that.

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Badlands

[Vidsidasta]

29 minutes ago, FuzzyDunlop said:

Stewards at the bottom of the park definitely helped with crowd control.

There were no stewards at the bottom of The Park when the crush happened on Friday night.  A single steward appeared about 40 minutes after we got stuck in the middle of it all (as we were trying to get OUT of The Park and away from Arcadia).  Things cleared up quickly after he appeared.

I noticed a lot of stewards in place on Saturday and Sunday night though, and didn't notice any problems then, so not sure why they weren't there on Friday as well.  If it was "negligence", they certainly learnt from Friday and improved things after that.

[kerplunk]

7 minutes ago, Big durbs said:

Gate D was just as bad , from what I was seeing it was the wristband that was the issue, everything else was flowing well then you had three or four queues into one long bench , with various wristband points . But you were having to fight to get your band ( with all your backpacks/ trolley ect , then fight your way back out . In previous years , one que went through, wristbands and straight out ! 

We were in the que for D at 4am and didn’t get in till 10 !

 

come on GF , your better than this , in-fact you always were the ones to show how it should be done!

Wow that makes me feel a lot better about my chaotic entry on wednesday morning and the snap decision I made to switch from from Gate D to Gate A. I set my alarm to 5.30, but it was past 7.00 when I finally joined the queue to gate A having done lots of walking dragging my trolley up hill and down dale only to find myself back within 150yds of where my car was parked

I got in at 10.15

[prestonmike]

18 minutes ago, FuzzyDunlop said:

We went to Gate A as Gate D looked a shambles. We parked up at 5am ish & were straight to the Zig Zags. We were in by 9 (to say the festival opened at 8, I thought that was decent)

2 of our group arrived 30 mins after us... they got in at about half 11. Gate A as well. So we got lucky with the timings.

I parked up at about 8.45, was in the zig zags by about 9.20 and didn't get in until gone midday, there was a period of about 30 mins where we didnt move at all

[jimmillen]

Something I noticed this year was that stewards appeared to have less “authority” than previous years.

Saw far more cases of people openly ignoring stewards instructions - in particular the Gate C re-entry queue on Sunday, where you had a steady stream of queue jumpers just streaming down the hill. 🙄

Probably ties into the covid break, where security & stewards maybe less confident or experienced, together with punters forgetting how to act decently. 

[lomac]

Honestly don't know why people go in so early. We arrived at like 5PM on Wednesday and got in with no queue at all, what are you really missing out on? We found an easy pitch on South Park, it's not really that far away.

[iwalker]

When I first went in 2002 it was the first one after 2000 was almost the last ever Glastonbury and they used to have deliberate clashes to spread the crowds round (I still regret missing Grohl era QOTSA to watch the Doves!) and it sounds like they need too get back in the habit of doing it.

I last went in 2013 and during the 11 years I went going on a Wednesday went from being something the hardcore did to being the default option.  Basically nothing happened on the Wednesday evening and a few dance tents opened on the Thursday but it was all quite low key.  On the Wednesday and Thursday they need to either have a variety of things on to accommodate the crowd or do nothing and let people make their own entertainment.

Thing is fashions change.  I always think what stopped 2008 selling out was the last two festivals (2005 and 2007) being wet as opposed to Jay-Z and while that can't be helped festivals don't know what the post-Covid environment will settle down to and Glastonbury aren't immune to that.

[prestonmike]

1 minute ago, lomac said:

Honestly don't know why people go in so early. We arrived at like 5PM on Wednesday and got in with no queue at all, what are you really missing out on? We found an easy pitch on South Park, it's not really that far away.

If we get tickets for next year, then i think we'll aim to arrive later and find somewhere a bit further out like bushy ground to camp in, don't mind walking a bit more to get back to the tent during the festival to avoid the mad Wednesday queues even if it does mean parking a bit further away too

[moogster]

5 minutes ago, jimmillen said:

Something I noticed this year was that stewards appeared to have less “authority” than previous years.

Saw far more cases of people openly ignoring stewards instructions - in particular the Gate C re-entry queue on Sunday, where you had a steady stream of queue jumpers just streaming down the hill. 🙄

Probably ties into the covid break, where security & stewards maybe less confident or experienced, together with punters forgetting how to act decently. 

I loved the traffic steward shouting "if you do not move you will die"  at some point when some cars passed by and people kept on crossing. She made her point.

[FuzzyDunlop]

14 minutes ago, Vidsidasta said:

There were no stewards at the bottom of The Park when the crush happened on Friday night.  A single steward appeared about 40 minutes after we got stuck in the middle of it all (as we were trying to get OUT of The Park and away from Arcadia).  Things cleared up quickly after he appeared.

I noticed a lot of stewards in place on Saturday and Sunday night though, and didn't notice any problems then, so not sure why they weren't there on Friday as well.  If it was "negligence", they certainly learnt from Friday and improved things after that.

Fair enough. I wasn't caught up in that so can't comment on that.

I know they blocked a path off from Arcadia forcing you down a longer way. We left Arcadia as we couldn't get in the circle & went to the Glade.

[robbie1983]

Think the toilet issue was deffo due to less urinals, where we camp in Pylon didn’t have the usual ones and also noticed a few others missing too. 

I reckon if they really want to make Arcadia safer they need to make the field bigger and add additional speakers. 
 

would mean eating into some of the camping area though and then additional camping would need to be found elsewhere. 

[ClementsMike]

Not sure if crowds overall seemed much worse than previous or that people have forgotten what its like to be amongst so many people?

The festival needs to have a word with itself though. As much as I appreciate the work of Secret Glasto, it means the secret sets are common knowledge and are overly busy. Putting anyone who is established on in Williams Green on Thursday is now just irresponsible, and the festival needs to be more dynamic in switching acts around if they have 'blown up'. Wetleg far too big to be in the park - I got in but was so far back I couldn't see and couldn't really hear, and that becomes worse as people around you become bored and start chatting and talking on phones. Glad I binned it off and caught the end of Blossoms with Mel C.

Only queuing sadness I had was the Sunday night bus back to B&W showground which was shared with the campervanners and individuals being picked up and dropped off, turning the wait from under five minutes (as its had been all weekend) to about an hour. Bummer.

[dan05delaney]

https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/contact-us/

 

Hope some people are contacting glasto and feeding back views, mist companies are open to general well worded experiences of what happened rather than just putting it on here, things might improve that way

[Larraht]

Gate A queue on Wednesday was horrific. Arrived at 8.20am - took 4.5 hours to get in. The queue would move for 10 mins and then security would stop anyone going through for half an hour. Rinse, repeat. And in the boiling heat. It was a tough one. I brought frozen bottles of water as I knew it would be hot - two lads offered me £20 each for one (I obviously didn't charge them) and ended up sharing with a girl looking like she was going to collapse too. No cans of water avaliable in the queue either. A shambles.

I was in the TLC crush but it moved and we got there. Never seen something like that in West Holts though - it was more akin to when a Pyramid headliner ends.

Sugababes I planned ahead knowing it was in a tent and I would be unlikely to see it if I wasn't early. Went and got a kebab in avalon and arrived to watch Nick Mulveys last song - managed to get near the front on the right hand side. All good. I think perhaps that will be my strategy for things I really want to see in future as it certainly felt busier.

I didn't find toilet/ food queues too awful. I never use cider bus toilets as inevitably they are usually busy. I was in SE corner Friday night/Saturday morning and not an issue. The ones between WH and other were busy but no more than 5 or 6 people deep.

 

 

[LoraMaze]

43 minutes ago, jimmillen said:

Something I noticed this year was that stewards appeared to have less “authority” than previous years.

Saw far more cases of people openly ignoring stewards instructions - in particular the Gate C re-entry queue on Sunday, where you had a steady stream of queue jumpers just streaming down the hill. 🙄

Probably ties into the covid break, where security & stewards maybe less confident or experienced, together with punters forgetting how to act decently. 

There were definitely none with any balls this year, and I think a higher percentage of punters didn’t give a fuck. And just generally more punters too

[lukemack]

I didn't find ques for food or bars thst bad at all tbh, ques for food obviously peak at breakfast and dinner times but seemed decent enough the rest of the day, maybe extra say 5 minutes than would normally expect, never waited more than 5 minutes at the bars.

Was just a nightmare moving around the festival in general every path and venue seemed bursting over capacity come Saturday

 

[Sku]

The "crust" has been mentioned many times. And it is the key issue in my view.

Watching back some of the footage, it's clear how much space there was down the front at many of acts which were considered "dangerously crowded".

I think the problem is, that the back has actually become the most popular place to watch from. It's convenient for the bars, the toilet, for food. It allows you to arrive at the last minute. It allows you to rush off to the next thing without getting stuck. You can set up a chair or picnic blanket if so inclined.

Again, and again, there were just crazy crushes at the BACK of stages, but not at the front. It used to be the case that you would avoid the front to avoid the crush, but now it's totally reversed. The front is totally sparse, and you are free to move around there. The back is a nightmare.

This is the key thing I think here. Crowd density. It's clear from all the BBC footage that crowds are sparse down front. Everyone is turning up at the last minute, and wanting to stand at the back. And then even if you want to get down the front, you cannot get through the wall of people, blankets and chairs.

A much smaller number of people causes a field to be full than ever before. I mean, there are many other contributing factors, but it's simple science that lower crowd density makes for a busier feeling festival. This is the key issue here, crowd behaviour has changed.

[marktea]

52 minutes ago, iwalker said:

Thing is fashions change.  I always think what stopped 2008 selling out was the last two festivals (2005 and 2007) being wet as opposed to Jay-Z and while that can't be helped festivals don't know what the post-Covid environment will settle down to and Glastonbury aren't immune to that.

Absolutely. There will now be economic factors in play too unfortunately. By the time of next ticket day peoples’ heating bills will be ticking back up and everyone will have had longer to live with the general effects of inflation on petrol and other items. I’m not saying that it won’t sell out but it seems to me to be inevitable that tougher times will, sadly, impact on peoples’ decisions as to whether they are able to go next year.