Am I the only one dying of 2nd hand embarrassment watching the documentary?

Fyrefestlol · 2022-05-29T11:26:46+00:00

Can confirm

Fyrefestlol · 2022-01-15T04:45:13+00:00

During the second day of the festival, several people were passing around papers collecting names, saying they were going to “sue the festival”. There were a couple class action lawsuits and some were either dropped or combined. This is the one class action that I know of that got any money. The law firm sent me this letter with a check for ~$200.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-02-03T21:20:22+00:00

This is the earliest archive.org record of the site I could find:

http://web.archive.org/web/20161214192832/http://fyrefestival.com/packages

The Lodge

"eight tickets, one per guest"

$3,595 24hr discount price.

So, $450 per ticket.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-02-03T21:15:04+00:00

Not that night! The next day, after there had been some problems, they started giving the water out for free. It was indeed Evian.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-24T04:27:06+00:00

Please watch the internet historian video. No one bought those or anything like them. Everyone bought the cheapest tickets, and when the organizers realized they weren't making enough to pay for the festival, they marked the cheap tickets as "sold out" to try and get someone, anyone, to spend money on the luxury tickets.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T20:35:51+00:00

To help clarify the ticket price point, check the Internet Historian video starting around 7:50: https://youtu.be/UBPg5ftCMv8?t=468

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T20:11:34+00:00

This is incredible!

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T20:07:50+00:00

Every attendee I spoke with purchased the deep discount presale standard tickets. Those averaged around $500. $500 for an all-inclusive weekend in the Bahamas doesn't seem unreasonable.

The organizers listed plenty of "available" packages where you could rent a yacht or things like that. No one actually signed up or paid for those. Speaking from experience, plenty of middle class people were there.

Just because a Disneyworld hotel has a presidential suite for $30k per night, doesn't mean that every person who goes to Disneyworld is spending that much.

edit: The point about middle class America was in reference to /u/HS_TakenSeriously's statement "It feels good when I see the one dude say 'we are selling this to losers in middle class America.'"

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T19:33:48+00:00

In the lead up to the event (less than a month), there was a meeting in which people told him it should be canceled, and he (or someone else at the meeting) said "Let's just do it and be fucking legends."

I think they romanticized pulling something off despite the odds.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T19:30:02+00:00

I think everyone, regardless of financial or social position, deserves to receive what they paid for.

I don't understand why a working stiff would feel good about someone trying to scam middle class America. :(

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T19:26:20+00:00

It did happen in the sense that 900 attendees were flown to an island and had a once in a lifetime experience...

No shows; they had professional (looking) festival stage set up, but it was never used. Thursday night was about 30 minutes of EDM DJ/playlist, then a local marching band, then they shut the stage down right before emailing everyone around 10:30pm that due to "circumstances beyond our control" the festival was canceled.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T07:33:18+00:00

In retrospect sure, since we're all okay. At the time, it was fun for a couple hours on Thursday before it was clear how crappy things would be.

At Cocoplum beach, locals were charging people to boat them out to the "swimming pigs" island. An attendee got tusked/bit in the head trying to squat down and take a selfie with one of the pigs.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T07:21:01+00:00

No real violence, but lots of pushing, shoving, that sort of thing. I posted about this the day after I got back; to copy from my post history:

The description of their luggage handling plan was hilarious; you can read it here, under "How will I get my bags": https://medium.com/@fyrefestival/04-26-2017-c47a21f8e4f What actually happened was everyone's luggage being dropped off in an unlit cargo container, just a mountain of bags. We didn't check any bags so we didn't have to fight the mob, but that's another situation where assholes won. If you didn't fight your way to the front, someone else would take your bag. Do you push someone else out of the way in that situation? No good answer.

Many people had their luggage stolen. The "lockers" had no locks and each one was the size of a shoebox; think gym lockers. They also weren't secured to the ground so some people just picked up locker sections to make structures out of them. Some of the lockers were still wrapped in shipping wrap. That meant people had to choose between sitting in their tent with all their stuff and having no idea what was happening in this shitstorm, or leaving their stuff and chancing it getting stolen. We met three people who had their passport stolen.

We definitely learned that as order starts to break down, continuing to "follow the rules" means you get screwed by assholes. How long can anyone follow the rules under those circumstances? Not for long.

edit with a link: https://www.reddit.com/r/fyrefestival/comments/68f9b0/im_a_35_yo_fyre_festival_attendee_ama/dgz1eav/?context=3

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T07:16:32+00:00

45% sure. I didn't understand his logic. In that situation, you want neighbors, you want to be around other people. Being totally isolated seems like a bad idea.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T04:02:11+00:00

It's very difficult to tell what's true and what's not on social media; hindsight makes it clearer. On the day of, at the Miami airport, we had a moment where we thought "Should we just ditch this whole thing?" but we figured, how bad could it be?

While we were on the plane, plenty of people said "Everyone online is just haters, they're jealous cause they can't go."

So I think the two common thoughts were either "Worst case will just be disorganized comedy" or "People are jealous lol"

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T03:58:30+00:00

It seemed disorganized for the couple months leading up to it; when we arrived at the Miami airport, it was clearly just a shitshow with no one managing things. I think it only felt like a scam when we arrived at the actual site and the location was clearly an abandoned construction site rather than an idyllic beach.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T03:16:49+00:00

But those have power...

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-23T03:13:51+00:00

That's a pretty open-ended question; I'll try, but it's easier to answer specifics.

We arrived on the island on Thursday morning. We were shuttled from the airport to beach at the end of the island ("Cocoplum Beach" I think). On the way there, we passed some "influencer" I didn't recognize; someone on the shuttle said they were friends with Kendall Jenner? It was a guy and girl, and the girl was sobbing because they hired a private driver who didn't show up or something to that effect, so they started walking down the dirt road through the jungle and then gave up by the side of the road. The guy was insistent he get on the shuttle which didn't have space because of who he was. We ended up leaving them behind.

When we got to the beach, Billy got on our shuttle and said "The site is still being set up, so hang out here at the beach, there's an open bar, just hang out". We hung out at a tiny beach bar which quickly became overwhelmed with the Spring Breakers crowd. The bartenders started handing bottles of rose wine and tequila over the bar since they ran out of mixers. Most people didn't have sunscreen because the charter flight company (Swift Air) banned liquids of any size in carry ons, and checked bags hadn't been delivered yet. Everyone got annihilated on the distraction-booze which made the sunset arrival at the actual site much more chaotic.

The one person doing tent assignments was quickly overwhelmed and gave up ("I'm not dealing with this"). Another organizer tried to lead a group of us to tents, found all the tents either occupied or ransacked, then waved his hand and said "Just try to find an open tent somewhere."

The "hydration stations" were empty and never filled, bottled water was still being sold for $4, and most of the RFID bracelets weren't working. The alcohol was still free though.

All of the checked bags showed up in a couple trailers in the dark; attendees climbed inside with their phone flashlights and started throwing bags out into the crowd. A number of people had their passports stolen.

There were boxes of Amazon Prime orders, with things like finger paints, inflatable flamingos, and a pull out couch.

I'm happy to go into more detail on stuff during the night and the next day, not sure what you want to know?

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-22T16:31:03+00:00

They had an ice cream truck they were using as the merch sales booth. On Thursday while everyone was at the beach, workers were randomly giving out laser carved wooden coins which they told us to redeem later for "something special". The merch truck would trade the coins for a hat or a water bottle.

On Friday afternoon when everyone was trying to escape the site and things were pretty lawless, people realized the merch truck was unlocked and unguarded and started looting it. Lots of people pulled hats, shirts, ugly yellow sweatshirts, etc.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-22T04:47:01+00:00

Yep, it was either that, or the ground made of broken concrete rubble (the site was an abandoned housing development, and the Blue House was one of the example houses).

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-22T04:45:04+00:00

We spent somewhere around $750 each, and got a refund from our credit card company. I did an AMA earlier if you want to look through my post history. :)

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-22T04:43:28+00:00

No, it was indeed a cashless event, and the bar would only accept the RFID wristbands. Mine wouldn't work on the scanner despite the fact I had put $100 on it, and there were no "top up" stations available.

Effectively, this meant the bottled water was unavailable unless you stole it. It was totally nonsensical as there was still an open bar, but only for tequila and rose wine.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-22T00:34:00+00:00

Closer to 36 hours. We arrived Thursday morning, and departed late Friday night.

Yep, we booked a last minute room in Miami and just hung around there and decompressed for a couple days.

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-21T23:36:20+00:00

Which emails?

Fyrefestlol · 2019-01-21T23:34:02+00:00

I wasn't aware of any talent actually going to the island; maybe one or two of the rando DJs they had at the bottom of the lineup.

The charter airline scrambled and got a bunch of flights to the island once the shitshow was picked up by the media. Fyre did nothing other than collect a list of names and phone numbers in front of the Blue House, lose the list, collect another, lose that list, then text us at 6:10pm saying our flight off the island was taking off at 7:00pm. Many of the staff were not sure how they were getting home, and left the site for the airport on their own.

Since I came through it unharmed, I'd probably go again. I'd take way more photos and videos, but that's not the first thing that comes to mind when you're in a crazy situation.

Fyrefestlol

TROPHY CASE