Site quieter?

[Crazyfool01]

1 minute ago, Talcroft said:

 

No reactions left but thank you for being so friendly and looking after me. Also got to meet a couple of others from the E&D thread so all in all a successful time. 

Pleasure glad you enjoyed it .. and chatting to my best mate more than me 

[Justcalledtosay]

48 minutes ago, Jacko45 said:

How many times did stages get closed over the weekend

 

5/6 times?

 

Not really good enough is it. 

That's crazy. I can imagine it spoiled a few people's day. Hopefully they can learn from this years problems, book a better line up across the site (particularly at the Pyramid) and spread people more evenly around the site.

 

41 minutes ago, Crazyfool01 said:

Not ideal but 1000 times better than any incident happening 

 

It shouldn't be happening in the first place. The festival have enough experience to understand the flow of people and how busy some acts are likely to be...it should've been easy enough to avoid.

Edited Tuesday at 01:12 PM by Justcalledtosay

[Devo96]

If they get Chappell next year they need to put her on Pyramid 

[Crazyfool01]

9 minutes ago, Justcalledtosay said:

That's crazy. I can imagine it spoiled a few people's day. Hopefully they can learn from this years problems, book a better line up across the site (particularly at the Pyramid) and spread people more evenly around the site.

 

 

It shouldn't be happening in the first place. The festival have enough experience to understand the flow of people and how busy some acts are likely to be...it should've been easy enough to avoid.

I mean yeah I agree ideally … but it’s happened in the past and will always happen sadly some weird slots that could have been avoided and some others they chose to preempt … like faithless being moved . I guess some parts of site are easier to manage steward wise … I know there’s a massive hub for doing this monitoring at the farm 

[nikkic]

16 minutes ago, Talcroft said:

 

No reactions left but thank you for being so friendly and looking after me. Also got to meet a couple of others from the E&D thread so all in all a successful time. 

Really gutted we didn’t get to meet. 

Must have been within metres of you and @bennyhana22 only for my phone to give up the ghost. 

Next year! 

[Justcalledtosay]

Just now, Crazyfool01 said:

I mean yeah I agree ideally … but it’s happened in the past and will always happen sadly some weird slots that could have been avoided and some others they chose to preempt … like faithless being moved . I guess some parts of site are easier to manage steward wise … I know there’s a massive hub for doing this monitoring at the farm 

I don't recall there being this many shut downs in recent years? Personally i think it steps from both the placement of acts and the lack of depth in the line up this year.

[Jacko45]

28 minutes ago, Talcroft said:

 

Security cannot win. Last two years accusations of dangerous overcrowding. This year they were super proactive and shut stages early to avoid this and they're being criticised for it. I'm not really sure what they're supposed to do except just book an entirely obscure lineup start to finish. 

 

I do think they need more signs like the SE Corner direction signs all over site so you're not setting off from Woodsies only to find SE Corner closed and can make other plans. People are more likely to be belligerent and push/refuse to leave if they've already put the effort in to get there. Could've been loads more app updates too - including suggestions of where else to go. (Amelie Lens was the obvious one here with a tiny crowd and yet Silver Hayes and SEC both shut.)

 

Sell less tickets? Give away less tickets? Decrease capacity basically - they can afford to do it. 

[Jacko45]

Sugababes - CLOSED

Avril - CLOSED

Kasabian - CLOSED

Bicep - CLOSED

Jungle - CLOSED

 

There just the ones that I know of over the weekend. 

[kalifire]

5 hours ago, M42 said:

It does feel a bit like the people doing the programming are either a bit naive, or genuinely don’t realise the size and pull of some of the acts they’ve booked.

 

Did no one stop WH bookers and say, “you know you’re probably going to have to close the field for Sugababes right?”

 

It’s almost as if the festival itself has become blinded by the clear generational shift. Any booking which is a “throwback” for the mid 20s to 40 yr old crowd is going to get a showing. Still feels like the festival doesn’t quite foresee it. This has happened three years in a row now.

For sure. The booking team don’t seem to understand the pulling power of retro. TLC, Avril, Mel C, Sugababes… fair enough they put Rick Astley on the Pyramid last year but overall they aren’t learning lessons. When an entire field has to literally shut, something has gone wrong. 

[jackmca]

2 hours ago, amb said:

Anyone know what happened at Prospa Sunday night? They posted something saying apologies for the mid-show stoppage, crowds got too heavy?

Yeah was in there, got too rammed just before they were to start and a stage manager came out to say they had to cancel their set. After 10 mins or so after people started to leave they came back out and played the rest of their set.

Edited Tuesday at 01:29 PM by jackmca

[mufcok]

The stage closing thing really pissed me off. I was just trying to get to Carhenge when Sugarbabes were on and kept getting turned away on different routes.

 

I think that comes down to bad booking though. A number of acts across the weekend were clearly playing the wrong stages.

 

Bicep in Dance Village on a Thursday is idiotic, to say the least 

[Mark E. Spliff]

58 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Busier than last year?

Yes - that was my clear impression, but as I said in my last post, it's only that: an impression.  I always avoid anything that I think could be a problem, and was pretty successful in doing this last year.  This year I found myself blundering into rivers of humanity on a regular basis.  That may mean I'm just getting out of touch with which acts are big draws, or it could be there were more people on site - I don't know.  (It could also mean that Glastonbury are getting better at the placement of stages and the scheduling of acts to spread the crowd around more evenly, meaning that I'm no longer getting the luxury of wandering around sparsely-populated areas whilst the big crowds are doing their thing elsewhere.)

[ProperTea]

5 hours ago, A Particular Grey Chihuahu said:

 

Just returning the favour with the downvote. What did I say that offended you, just out of interest?

Sorry, wasn't deliberate! I can't see it now to change it 

[LinvoyPrimus]

29 minutes ago, Devo96 said:

If they get Chappell next year they need to put her on Pyramid 

Watch as she gets booked to headline The Park.

[irnkrtn]

49 minutes ago, Chip Batch said:

Out of upvotes, but this. 

 

Lynks, Lambrini Girls, Squid, Noname, This is the Kit, PJ Harvey, LCD and Idles all on Friday by avoiding all the fairly obvious potential overcrowding acts. I was able to get close for all of those too and some with plenty of room.

Though this happened to coincide with what I wanted to see anyway so that made it easier. I did similiar the other days too.

 

 

Friday was brilliant - my favourite day. Saw Annie Mac, Lynks, the Yoko Ono performance on the park, Angie McMahon, Paul Heaton, worked a 4 hour shift, and saw Faithless and almost all of Dua Lipa. Took me exactly 7 minutes to power walk from the Glade to Dua and got a great spot without cutting anyone else up into the crowd either.

Heard people saying it was the busiest its ever been and people saying site was quiet. My experience was it was about the same as ever. Stage closures wasn't due to a different type of overcrowding, but rather a better attempt at crowd management. I think they probably need to reflect on what happened with Avril Lavigne and make adjustments. Wrong stage sure but also, they allowed the entire railway to get blocked up with people watching which meant there was no way out. Got caught in a crush of panicked people.

[Simo71]

This was my 7th festival but my 1st since 2017 and all I can say is WOW, it was hugely busier than before. I dread to think what might happen if there is a really bad weather year and that many people on site! Something has to give, at times it is simply not safe.

[Crazyfool01]

7 minutes ago, Simo71 said:

This was my 7th festival but my 1st since 2017 and all I can say is WOW, it was hugely busier than before. I dread to think what might happen if there is a really bad weather year and that many people on site! Something has to give, at times it is simply not safe.

Bad weather does mean people stay in tents more / leave earlier so it kind of counteracts to some extent 

[irnkrtn]

50 minutes ago, Justcalledtosay said:

That's crazy. I can imagine it spoiled a few people's day. Hopefully they can learn from this years problems, book a better line up across the site (particularly at the Pyramid) and spread people more evenly around the site.

 

 

It shouldn't be happening in the first place. The festival have enough experience to understand the flow of people and how busy some acts are likely to be...it should've been easy enough to avoid.

I'm not sure its that easy to avoid - the only field on site with the capacity to hold the entire festival is the Pyramid. Unless you ban stages from hosting people who might fill the field, I can't see how you'd avoid reaching capacity sometimes? If you were to do that, you'd significantly limit who could be booked where. Hindsight is 20/20 but I bet if you sat down with a list of potential field filling acts from this year, you'd cut a huge amount out. For sure, Faithless wouldn't have been allowed to play the Glade because that was set up with security on the basis it might be full - in the end it wasn't. 

Lots of the stages are semi-autonomous, and I've no doubt from a safety perspective the higher up festival oversight would intervene for something that would be truly dangerous. For example, Fred Again on Strummerville which was quite rightly a total secret and not publicised. But you would lose a lot of the independent spirit of the various festival areas too.

I much, much prefer the approach to crowd management and sometimes missing something - the thing I think they'll keep refining and get better at, as I've seen improve year in year out - is the crowd management piece including sometimes having to close an area which is 100x preferable to the crush. 

 

Edited Tuesday at 01:59 PM by irnkrtn

[irnkrtn]

 

35 minutes ago, Jacko45 said:

Sugababes - CLOSED

Avril - CLOSED

Kasabian - CLOSED

Bicep - CLOSED

Jungle - CLOSED

 

There just the ones that I know of over the weekend. 

To put that into perspective - about 0.2% of the acts playing over the festival.

[irnkrtn]

30 minutes ago, mufcok said:

The stage closing thing really pissed me off. I was just trying to get to Carhenge when Sugarbabes were on and kept getting turned away on different routes.

 

I think that comes down to bad booking though. A number of acts across the weekend were clearly playing the wrong stages.

 

Bicep in Dance Village on a Thursday is idiotic, to say the least 

Which route were you trying to take? This is a purely out of interest. I know the Railway was closed heading from the Glade down towards the SE corner. Which other bits did they close off to get it clear?

[CaledonianGonzo]

3 minutes ago, irnkrtn said:

 

To put that into perspective - about 0.2% of the acts playing over the festival.

 

And it's only an issue If the bookers/ organisers perceive it as an issue. For all we know it might even be considered a success.

 

Granted shows being stopped due to safety issues isn't good, but that can still happen in fields that aren't packed full.

[Spindles]

56 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

There were definitely push warnings from the App about busy areas two years ago.

 

One of the engineers posts on here. Should be easy to message him re. it.

I think the app this year was great.  It would really benefit with something like a traffic light system on the lineup showing potential crowding by using a combination of the number of people with acts highlighted on their app and live observation (they had a drone up over the interstage area every night for overview of crowds around the central festival area).  Push warnings are decent, as would be popups in the app warning of potential pinch points.

[dougal1]

1 hour ago, Devo96 said:

From what I saw:

 

sugababes closed WH

Kasabian closed Woodsies 

Bicep closed SH and Icon

Charli closed SH

Avril locked off Other 

Friday night shut down Temple and Shangri-La was full by 3am 

it’s difficult to say find alternatives when the alternatives are shut down, and you can’t get into Stonebridge! 

Jayda G's set in Greenpeace was shut down half way through due to overcrowding and she isn't even one of the huge names being discussed 

[kemosabe]

I've kind of had my say already and I recognise I'm just one voice and had one experience compared to 200k plus people. 

 

But I don't mind the odd act getting shut down, or a few busy points. I understand the reasons for that. There has been those since I started going, especially on the Thursday. 

 

The issue really is that since COVID the whole site just generally feels a whole lot busier everywhere and it's spoiling the festival. We know they increased tickets, and imo that has contributed to a far worse experience for everyone involved. Every stage feels busier then it was in the past. 

 

We can all suggest small potential "fixes" - bigger stages on Thursdays, releasing the line up earlier so people have time smaller acts and spreading out (or using social media/ the BBC to hype them up), being more fluid with bumping people up when needed, crowd control measures, push notifications etc. 

 

But it's all papering over the cracks. They need to reduce tickets back to 2019 levels imo. 

Edited Tuesday at 02:23 PM by kemosabe

[DeanoL]

55 minutes ago, Justcalledtosay said:

I don't recall there being this many shut downs in recent years? Personally i think it steps from both the placement of acts and the lack of depth in the line up this year.

But probably also a more proactive approach to safety. Like, this year we've not seen people saying "they should have closed the field for X as it was dangerously busy". They should still improve the placement of acts, but I'm not sure they've got loads worse, just being a bit more cautious, which I think is good.

 

 

46 minutes ago, Mark E. Spliff said:

Yes - that was my clear impression, but as I said in my last post, it's only that: an impression.  I always avoid anything that I think could be a problem, and was pretty successful in doing this last year.  This year I found myself blundering into rivers of humanity on a regular basis.  That may mean I'm just getting out of touch with which acts are big draws, or it could be there were more people on site - I don't know.  (It could also mean that Glastonbury are getting better at the placement of stages and the scheduling of acts to spread the crowd around more evenly, meaning that I'm no longer getting the luxury of wandering around sparsely-populated areas whilst the big crowds are doing their thing elsewhere.)

I always use the theatre fields as my measure as they generally have a similar pull every year (as its mostly the same acts). Seeing those fields busy Fri-Sun last year is what made me sure the numbers must have gone up. They weren't uncomfortably busy at all, they weren't a problem, just they're generally dead from about 6pm onwards whereas last year they remained busy the entire festival. Didn't go this year though and not heard from anyone about stuff there. That's the closest I can find to a fair measure though, and even that's not perfect.