Splendour In The Grass has apologised for an organisational stuff-up on Friday night, that left thousands of punters stranded at the festival site, and others fighting for elbow room on overcrowded buses.
Ticket-holders, who had paid for shuttle services to take them to locations such as Brunswick Heads, Ocean Shores and Byron Bay itself were left to wait upwards of three hours after bands finished for the day, and vented their anger on Splendour’s Facebook.
The “line” for the buses at #SITG2016 been waiting for 65mins so far. Poor form #Splendour organisers @secretsounds pic.twitter.com/ojhl33RLmM
— BrigFee (@boo_indeed) July 22, 2016
A punter, who wished to remain anonymous, told PEDESTRIAN.TV:
“Splendour buses were absolutely fucked last night. Literally thousands of people in two-and-a-half hour waits for the bus, no staff knew what was going on, so hundreds (if not thousands) of people decided to walk home along the busy highway, rather than face hours of uncertainty.”
Those who did successfully make it onto buses were faced with overcrowding, and traffic jams. One such unfortunate soul, Matt, compared the waiting area to a “mosh pit”, and said he was nearly punched by queue-jumpers at one point.
After making it on board, he said:
“… had to crawl in on the floor of the bus under a seat because it was way [too] overpacked it was dangerous, then the bus drove off and we all feared it would run out of fuel it sat in traffic for that long. Finally made it out of the festival traffic then everyone on the bus started cheering but it got quiet real quick because we realised it was gonna be another hour to Kingscliff.”
Late last night, Splendour made an announcement via social media channels saying “we hear you” and “we are doing everything we can to get you home as quickly and safely as possible.”
“Hi everyone!
We want to send out a huge and sincere apology to all those caught in traffic getting home yesterday!! A lot of planning goes into Splendour, it’s a year round process and based on previous years we constantly try and improve your experience. Obviously that wasn’t the case yesterday and there were long delays getting home. To give background we have a significant change in the numbers of people getting dropped off and collected from Splendour which threw our traffic plan into disarray. We are re-working the traffic plan, relocating the drop off/collection area to the south of the carpark and giving right of way to our public transport system. You’ll see the changes when you arrive, we’ll post a map in the next few hours with clear directions but please bear with us, we hear you and will do everything within our control to make it right!!”
Splendour seem optimistic that the changes will lead to an improved bus situation tonight, although many angry punters on Facebook are calling for refunds on their tickets, saying they don’t trust the shuttle buses to get them home in one piece.
Photo: Mark Metcalfe / Getty.
