EXPERIENCE : WE ARE FSTVL

So, I was excited for the first festival of 2018 but it turned out to be a shit storm of an event. The “NO ID, NO ENTRY” was complete lies as I didn’t get asked for ID once and neither did anyone else that was around me. Another lie was you’re only allowed 6 cans bullshit, the man who checked through my bag felt I had a lot more alcohol than a few cans n just allowed it (not complaining) but it became an issue when he was clearly sexist, didn’t even check my mates bag yet when it came to my boyfriend all of his liquids were emptied – even a juice squeeze thing because it’s “not acceptable” but I took at least three in and the man didn’t care less, just looked at them n put them back in my bag! Some men need to re-evaluate themselves, could’ve let my mate in with some madness in her bag (like a bomb) because he’s trying to come across as an alright geezer to girls rather than worry about the safety of those at the festival.

just because we are girls it doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of destruction and sneaking forbidden items in too……..

FIRSTLY, the queues to get in…. appalling. Not only did it take over an hour n a half just to get searched (even tho we were close to the front because we arrived early) they changed the rules of what was allowed in and what was not acceptable! Felt sorry for my boyfriend who carried so much drink (water n lemonade) just to be told that even SEALED drinks were no longer acceptable – even tho those at the front were allowed.

SECONDLY, the information…. the information…. what fkin information? There was such a lack of it that was given on the first night that I missed DARKZY (cri for me!) even the ‘information tent’ didn’t have any idea of timings or where anything was! The Saturday morning we asked where we could find set times and those in the info tent told us that there’s a stall with lanyards and we should look “around here somewhere” – went all over the place just to find out that the stall with lanyards was closed off within the main arena until the afternoon…. what a JOKE – the information tent were so useless it was actually shocking. (never found the stall either, people that were camped near us took photos of one they found and shared the information – if it weren’t for that it’d have been a struggle)

THIRDLY, some of the food stalls there were utter DIRT. I am a coeliac so i’m allergic to wheat, barley n gluten (bread n tings) so I asked a breakfast van found in the campsite section if I could literally have a quid off due to me not having any roll n I didn’t rate paying SEVEN POUND for a slice of bacon n an egg… but na this woman decided to tell me how she can’t be sure if it’s all gluten free anyway because they cook EVERYTHING on the same cooker… my reaction was to shout at them, call them disgusting n filthy then walk away. Later on I went to a burger stand that had 100% beef burgers n because I was allergic to the bun they gave me an extra slice of cheese (yum) instead of being gobby and rude like the breakfast van was.

FOURTHLY, I don’t know what it was about security at the festival but they were certainly broken…. my boyfriend got stopped 3 times in ONE day going into the arena for ‘random searching’ (takes around 5-10 minutes) fair enough it’s for security but why continue to pick him when he is far from a bait head compared to some of the other people that are at the festival,

I could go on and on andddd on about the negatives to the festival but you know the basis of what went wrong. The positives were mainly how well the acts performed (especially SKEPSIS) and the close distance from the campsite to the arena which was a pleasant surprise. I wouldn’t recommend this festival due to the intense (yet stupid) security on site and the useless staff who know don’t know anything – it was such a drag trying to find out set times and wasn’t as good as I expected.

(( would probably go back for the jacket potato stand tho…. mhmmmm ))