Fyre Festival was promoted as an unforgettable luxury experience of godlike proportions, widely advertised as a “once in a lifetime experience.”
With the most basic tickets ranging from $450 to $1500, a hugely advertised package of $12,000 and VIP lodgings going as ludicrously high as $250,000, the festival was set to take place on an island in the Bahamas and it should have started this Thursday afternoon. Ja Rule was one of the organizers, and it was largely advertised by the likes of Kendall Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski.
This is how the festival was announced on the official Fyre Festival Instagram:
But the reality was vastly different.
The first wave of paying guests arrived on the island this morning to find a desolate wasteland.
Tents were half-built, the gourmet food was a simple cheese sandwich, no one knew where to go, lockers had no locks, and luggage had to be stored inside a poorly secured shipping container.
The promised ‘luxury food area” was poorly structured and barely lit.
This is what the festival really looked like:
To make matters worse, there was no personnel on the site to assist anyone.
The deplorable state of the festival made most guests panic and try to get back home immediately, but some simply got stuck there.
And this is what the “gourmet food” looked like:
Ultimately, people had to fight to find and get their luggage at night, which was stored inside a shipping container with no lights:
One of the main bands headlining the festival, Blink 182, canceled at the last minute, stating they weren’t confident they would have what they needed for a quality performance.
Ja Rule posted about the confusion on Twitter after the tag went viral and many claims were made that the festival was a scam to get money. He stated the festival was not a scam and that efforts were being made to refund everyone:
About the disaster, Fyre Festival sent an email to guests stating:
"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 are unable to fulfill on that vision safely and enjoyably for our guests. The festival is being postponed until we can further assess if and when we are able to create the high-quality experience we envisioned."
Tweets, Instagram posts, and Snaps quickly brought the festival to public attention this morning, and it’s still unclear how and why it turned out the way it did.
William Finley made a series of popular tweets about the festival detailing his dreadful experience getting there and then trying to get back.
When trying to get the plane back home, he stated someone passed out because they were left locked in a hot room.
There was no food available for most of the time they were waiting for the plane. He even posted a picture of the line at the airport where someone had vomited on the floor (see the image).
Efforts started being made to bring everyone back safely after people sent out tweets and messages to friends and family desperately trying to get out of the event.
Perhaps soon we’ll know the reason Fyre Festival became such a nightmare, but there is no good excuse for leaving so many people unattended and in such poor conditions on an island fighting for luggage and food.
Fyre Festival surely became an unforgettable experience for everyone who got there, but for all the wrong reasons.
What do you think about all this? Do you know anyone who attended the Fyre Festival, or wanted to go? What do you think happened here? Let us know in the comments below or on our page on Facebook!
