Hideout 2015

Sineadbcoyle

Anyone heading to Hideout in Croatia this year?

Sineadbcoyle

In case anyone finds this thread and wanted to know what it was like from the perspective of an Irish person, here's a few opinions:

Before:
- TRAVEL: Flights and package deals are pretty expensive, so unless you book your flights early, they may be prohibitively so. We booked late, so flew to Budapest and rented a car, drove for 7/8 hours over 2 days one way through some pretty beautiful scenery. I loved having the car when we were there as well, for drink, food, and one day we went to a national park during the day.
- ACCOMMODATION: You don't have to book your accommodation on the Hideout website. It may be more expensive, and once you've booked, it's difficult to view the accommodation information page again, so take screen shots. Our accommodation was grand, but we booked late so it was in Metajna, which is one of the furthest towns away. This wasn't too bad, because it was quiet, but if you don't want quiet, that's obviously a drawback. Metajna was beautiful though, had a lovely beach to swim at every morning.
- SHUTTLE BUSES: Buy a festival shuttle pass for the island - saves you having to pay cash every time you get on. Roughly €3 for a single, I think it was about €25 for the 9 day pass.
- BOAT PARTIES: I would recommend getting one boat party ticket. It's great to experience, but more than 1 would probably be too much, purely because of the heat (so Irish I know)! Also, find out where the boats leave from sooner rather than later. We missed one because it left from a different quay.

During:
- SHUTTLE BUSES: the festival buses go quite regularly - maybe 2 an hour. If you go at peak times though, it's best to be at the end of the line like we were in Metajna. We passed loads of stops on the way in at about 9/10pm because the bus was too full
- FESTIVAL GROUND: The festival ground itself is Zrce beach - there's loads of clubs along it, really close to each other.
- FESTIVAL BAND: You don't actually need a festival band to go to the beach, but they won't let you into clubs without one (you can't pay at the door). You can definitely hear and sometimes see the acts from the beach, but it's loads of fun being in the clubs
- ALCOHOL: Drink is pretty expensive in the clubs (€7.50 for a can of Beck's in Aquarius, slightly more reasonable €5 for "house beer" in Calypso, spirits and mixer are generally about €7/8, wine about €6/7). You can, however, BURY DRINK at the beach! We would have a can between clubs on the beach. Nice to have a chill can before the next club! There are also these mega cocktail drinks you can get, if I remember correctly they were about €14 for like a litre, but they're pretty watered down.
- MUSIC: On between about 12-6pm during the day and 8pm-6am at night. It's quite hot during the day, but there are pool parties which are fun.
- FOOD: There's pretty general festival food there - chips, burgers, wraps. If you can find the place that makes the wraps fresh, it is worth the wait. So good. There's also a bit of a restaurant open during the day, it has things like pasta.
- ATM: There are loads of ATMs on the beach.
- ORIENTATION: There are 2 Novalja (Novalja and Stara Novalja) towns, it's a bit confusing. They both have a lot of accommodation, but Novalja is closer to Zrce beach, and is where the boats leave from. It also has nice restaurants and bars.
- PEOPLE/ATMOSPHERE: it's mostly people from the UK, which is grand, but a lot of them were eejits. Like they'd been in the gym/sun bed all year to prep for this. Us two turned up with our milky white skin and sensible clothes and we were the odd ones out. We had very little trouble but a lot of the people there are pretty louty. It doesn't ruin the festival atmosphere though.
- NO2 - EVERYONE was taking this, so much so that the clubs that had banned it started selling it at the end of the week. Madness

Anyway, if anyone has any more questions, fire ahead.