Boutique music and arts festival Lost Picnic went down yesterday in Sydney’s Domain, but the event, which featured headliners Fat Freddy’s Drop, has copped some largely negative feedback today, with their Facebook event bombarded with refund demands.
Organised by Finely Tuned Productions, who also run the NYE festival Lost Paradise, the event was set to offer the “city’s ultimate outdoor experience of food, music and performance” but many punters have been left angered over claims of extremely long lines for food and beverage and poorly managed crowds and services.
@lostpicnic sorry just so ridiculous organisation and queuing for most of the festival no good and where are the staff so bad!!!
— oliver buthlay (@OButhlay) October 16, 2017
One attendee who spoke to Pedestrian.TV said he “had to line up for over 90 mins and then when I got pretty much to the front they had run out of all alcohol for that stall and we had to wait for a pallet to be delivered. [His friend] also had to line up for like 40 mins to pick up pre ordered food.”
Similar waits and stock outages have been reported on the Facebook event with one punter claiming “Hour and 15 minutes to get a beer. 20 minutes to use the loo. Do the maths.”
A forced recycling program also added to wait times, with a deposit system forcing people to line up twice, once at the bar and once at the recycling station.
https://twitter.com/DasBlyth84/status/919528775695548416
themusic.com.au reports that many commenters were demanding refunds (these appear to have been deleted at time of writing), with one posting: “This is a disaster of an event and you should be offering refunds to everyone!”
Organisers have released the following official statement:
Lost Picnic 2017 was 9 months in the making and we continually strive to put on high end, quality events. We sincerely apologise for the long wait times and agree there were numerous operational issues on the day. We will be addressing all of these well in advance of next year. We hope the 8500 attendees still enjoyed the ambience, amazing music line-up, kids entertainment, beautiful venue & epic closing set by Fat Freddy’s Drop. Thank you to everyone who attended and for your support.
The one saving grace seems to have been the music with many positive comments on Fat Freddy’s Drop, as well as other performers Sarah Blasko, and Montaigne.
We’re back, spring in our step… roll on summer. Chur @lostpicnic & Sydney peeps. pic.twitter.com/Vri5dmCZ8q
— Fat Freddys Drop (@fatfreddysdrop1) October 15, 2017
