All Together Now 2019

MJohnston

Poorside wrote: »

Ironic or a trend?

Seems like a trend. I said after last years that I felt that certain elements were designed to rapidly expand and that there was a danger of exploitative behaviour from the organisers. But I didn't expect it to manifest this quickly, that they would put this little effort into traffic management.

This could be a real disaster for Pod - tomorrow and Sunday evening look quite wet in the forecasts, so Friday was their one sunny beautiful day to rack in a bit of positive word of mouth and they got this instead.

Mind you, still pretty sure it'll sell out if it runs next year.

Also: if I was down there, I'd be a bit worried about what *these* organisers have done to prepare for rain. It's a very hilly site, but that can work both ways.

BaZmO*

That’s a good point about the weather. Absolute PR disaster. Today was the day to make an impression and they made a mess of it.

Imagine spending 7 hours in car, putting up your tent in the dark, missing all the acts on day 1, and then getting p1ssed on for the next 2 days.

Orson Swelled

BlackandGreen wrote: »

Not going to lie, but traffic and cars are a scourge in general.
would have made a lot more sense to have remote/distance parking and shuttle busses in.
Cars are laziness, if you'd have walked or cycled from 5km away you'd have been there in 30 minutes. But people would rather sit in their cars for several hours polluting the place.



Much like the traffic problems in cities.

Although thats largely down to the organiser I guess.

Lack of facilities and infrastructure.

Yesterday I spent 2 hours following signs directing 'all festival traffic'. When I finally got there it was an emergency entrance/exit and every single car and person was being turned away. Hundreds of cars, all grinding away in
1st gear. The steward had no idea why those signs were in place. There was a Guard on a motorbike that had no idea what was going on.

The only laziness yesterday was on the part of the festival organisers.

keithkk16

So glad we didn't try and make the trip down from Donegal for this, cause that would of been a hellhole of a journey for us. ATN should take notes from B&S about traffic management

Reggie noble

So what time did the traffic finally die down at last night ? Wonder who has the record for sitting in their car the longest , see some people saying 9 hours 🙈

billybonkers

9 hours is madness, I would love to be there don't get me wrong from what I saw it looked amazing last night but that traffic would piss me off so much

Obviously they were not prepared for the amount of people to arrive down yesterday, possibly should have considered opening the campsites on Thursday to spread it out a bit. And arranged several different routes with well coordinated traffic management. That is a real oversight and should not have occurred with the experience the team running it have between them, it's not really acceptable.

However I hope all goes smoother today for all the festival goers and the weather holds up, they still have two days of fun ahead

Toast

Toast wrote: »

Stuck in the queue to the car park. Going to be some horrible tailbacks later.

Called it when we were coming in it would end up like this. We pretty much flew up to the blue gate earlier yesterday but the last bit of getting into the estate was already backed up at 11.15. the delay was the attempt to manage parking it would seem and it just backed up all those tiny roads Google sent us to try follow the plan.

Don't think us early heads had it easy. The festival was late opening and had to queue in the midday sun through a horrible start stop for a good hour and a half with all our gear. Needed to be twice the capacity at the gate for searches/armbands and it needed to open on time.

At least the search was light at that point. Don't think they wanted to add too much insult to injury.

Lester Freamon

Going to be interesting to read peoples final reviews from Monday morning onwards.

And also how ATN pitch 2020 early bird offer in the coming weeks. People loyally buying tickets without knowing the line up will be massively lessened if ATN can't guarantee a smooth festival experience

dartboardio

Our bus eireann shuttle turfed us out by the crew camping, which we later found out was very near the entrance.

However a steward told us to keep walking, go down further and turn in left which ended up taking 1 hour and 15 mins walking dragging bags and equipment absolutely sweating

Only seen this one steward and no signs. Later found out we could have just gone straight into the queue when we were talking to the steward but she sent us off on a wild goose chase

johnnyskeleton

Anyways....saw Kitt Phillipa who was good but a little depressing to start off a festival on a sunny day. Kamaal Williams was more festivalley, pumping out the jazzy techo (or the technoey jazz, im not sure).

Ships were late on for reasons best not got into, but played a stomper and finished with a version of controversy that Prince wouldve said was too Princey.

Saw a bit of fontaines dc from afar and as I wasnt fully in the crowd maybe my experience was a bit different but they were underwhelming. Have seen them 2/3 times before and they lacked energy and stage presence (again, possibly due to where I was). Didnt finish of boys from the better land which was odd.

Orbital had a good stage show but arent really my scene. KKC were awesome as always but the Something Kind of Wonderful tent was too small for them.

Roll on day 2

fillup

Left Dublin around 10:20. Flew down - followed google maps directions and instead of getting off M9 at Junction 10 went to where it intersected with N25. Queued for about 15 mins in traffic Travel time 2 hrs 50 mins and no queue for family camping. Pretty much seemeless.

Met people who left Dublin either around the same time or earlier and were 4 hours and more on the road. They'd used different routes.

Dodged a feckin bullet there

fillup

Left Dublin around 10:20. Flew down - followed google maps directions and instead of getting off M9 at Junction 10 went to where it intersected with N25. Queued for about 15 mins in traffic Travel time 2 hrs 50 mins and no queue for family camping. Pretty much seemeless.

Met people who left Dublin either around the same time or earlier and were 4 hours and more on the road. They'd used different routes.

Dodged a feckin bullet there

Aceso

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Anyways....saw Kitt Phillipa who was good but a little depressing to start off a festival on a sunny day. Kamaal Williams was more festivalley, pumping out the jazzy techo (or the technoey jazz, im not sure).

Ships were late on for reasons best not got into, but played a stomper and finished with a version of controversy that Prince wouldve said was too Princey.

Saw a bit of fontaines dc from afar and as I wasnt fully in the crowd maybe my experience was a bit different but they were underwhelming. Have seen them 2/3 times before and they lacked energy and stage presence (again, possibly due to where I was). Didnt finish of boys from the better land which was odd.

Orbital had a good stage show but arent really my scene. KKC were awesome as always but the Something Kind of Wonderful tent was too small for them.

Roll on day 2

KKC definitely in too small a tent.

CWF

BlackandGreen wrote: »

Not going to lie, but traffic and cars are a scourge in general.
would have made a lot more sense to have remote/distance parking and shuttle busses in.
Cars are laziness, if you'd have walked or cycled from 5km away you'd have been there in 30 minutes. But people would rather sit in their cars for several hours polluting the place.

Much like the traffic problems in cities.

Although thats largely down to the organiser I guess.

Lack of facilities and infrastructure.

Yeah because EVERYONE who doesn't walk 5k with their young children in roasting heat and all of their camping gear, food and drink for the weekend is totally lazy and doesn't care about the environment

hetuzozaho

Was ships set delayed due to traffic?

MargoChanning

We went out using back roads so we got there no problem yesterday (local knowledge). Really enjoyed it once we got there, getting a lift home was a different issue. We were trying to find the pick up point for the blue camping- not signposted anywhere, asked one steward and he said he didn’t know the way cos he had just started working (??) two other stewards told us the wrong way and added about half an hour to our walk, so annoying and disorganised!! As we were leaving then there was about 10 stewards standing around doing nothing by the exit-thanks for all the help lads! They will for sure need to pull up their socks as regards traffic/organisation/planning next year

Lester Freamon

Who is the main person over POD now and the running of this festival since John Reynolds passed?

Melvin Benn very visible in terms of EP communications and PR.

No sign of this from ATN.

The absolute patronisation to waffle on about the beautiful site and line up in the same social media message where they mention the traffic issues was something else. Not to mention that they actually blame thier own customers.

Their message on traffic should have been standalone

Lester Freamon

Who is the main person over POD now and the running of this festival since John Reynolds passed?

Melvin Benn very visible in terms of EP communications and PR.

No sign of this from ATN.

The absolute patronisation to waffle on about the beautiful site and line up in the same social media message where they mention the traffic issues was something else. Not to mention that they actually blame thier own customers.

Their message on traffic should have been standalone

donal666

Great show by KKC but ears still buzzing this morning!

Aceso

Apparently any shuttle buses have been cancelled and won't be running today, not sure about tomorrow yet.

Dunmoreroader

This sounds like a complete sh1tshow re traffic. Was going to get someone to pick us up from Waterford and drop us off in Portlaw to avoid Blue Gate Chaos.
Can it be done? Will the Gardai allow us through? Are their shuttle buses running frequently or at all?

MargoChanning

Dunmoreroader wrote: »

This sounds like a complete sh1tshow re traffic. Was going to get someone to pick us up from Waterford and drop us off in Portlaw to avoid Blue Gate Chaos.
Can it be done? Will the Gardai allow us through? Are their shuttle buses running frequently or at all?

The traffic won’t be anything as bad as it was yesterday so I wouldn’t be worried at all, you should be grand to either get dropped off at the drop off point at blue gate (we did this yesterday) or get the shuttle bus from Waterford. It’s a fair old walk from portlaw village so I wouldn’t recommend being dropped off there, especially when the traffic chaos has died down now

Orson Swelled

I'm arriving today and will be driving home tonight. The same again tomorrow. Will I have much hassle getting out of there? Is the car park organised? I'm worried about getting blocked in.

Dunmoreroader

MargoChanning wrote: »

The traffic won’t be anything as bad as it was yesterday so I wouldn’t be worried at all, you should be grand to either get dropped off at the drop off point at blue gate (we did this yesterday) or get the shuttle bus from Waterford. It’s a fair old walk from portlaw village so I wouldn’t recommend being dropped off there, especially when the traffic chaos has died down now

Ok so Portlaw is a no-go area and getting dropped off at Blue Gate, say tomorrow evening around 5 or 6 might be ok. What about pick up after The National finish? Shuttle buses into town will be jammed, queues of people waiting until 3am unless they have 50 lined up so that leaves getting picked up at Blue Gate which might be jammed again too.
Alternatively, walk miles to some prearranged alternative pick up point?

MargoChanning

Dunmoreroader wrote: »

Ok so Portlaw is a no-go area and getting dropped off at Blue Gate, say tomorrow evening around 5 or 6 might be ok. What about pick up after The National finish? Shuttle buses into town will be jammed, queues of people waiting until 3am unless they have 50 lined up so that leaves getting picked up at Blue Gate which might be jammed again too.
Alternatively, walk miles to some prearranged alternative pick up point?

I went in and out every day last year and had no difficulty leaving the car park any night, even the Sunday night which did have more people with day tickets. We left the car park last night at half 2, not a single car leaving at the same time and we were back in Carrick after about 20 mins. As I said in my previous post the only difficulty we had was finding the pick up/drop off point in blue car park last night, no sign posts for it and stewards seemingly didn’t know the direction for it either which added half an hour onto our walk towards it

friendlyfun

Traffic is now flowing freely stop whinging ffs

Orson Swelled

friendlyfun wrote: »

Traffic is now flowing freely stop whinging ffs

Piss off.

Dunmoreroader

Orson Swelled wrote: »

Piss off.

+1

Aceso

friendlyfun wrote: »

Traffic is now flowing freely stop whinging ffs

People are entitled to have a "whinge", it was a fucking shit show yesterday, people need to let off steam.

CWF

friendlyfun wrote: »

Traffic is now flowing freely stop whinging ffs

Yeah like, it only took 24 hours