13 ms·

Luxury Music Festival Turns Out to Be Half-Built Scene of Chaos

171 points by ljk 9y ago

Tunecrew 9y ago
The number one issue with this festival for those of us in the Caribbean (and those of us who are also involved in the entertainment industry) is that this casts a very negative image on festivals here in general. This is in spite of the fact that throughout the region, much larger and more elaborate events occur frequently, e.g. carnival in Trinidad (and everywhere else), St. Lucia Jazz Fest, Reggae Sumfest, SXM, countless large sporting events like the ICC Cricket World Cup, etc. I'm performing at a new one called Tmrw.Tday in Negril in two weeks - luckily the Fyre thing happened too late to affect ticket sales for that one I think.
maxander 9y ago
For everyone who hates the "plug-and-play" trips to Burning Man set up for rich kids, this story is the schadenfreude of the year. It turns out that the logistics of throwing giant festivals in remote locations are difficult! Who would have guessed? I look forward to the deeper investigative reporting on precisely how that mess worked out as badly as it did, but the combination of promise-vs-reality mismatch and the rough PR afterwards suggests incompetence on all levels.
- sanswork 9y ago
  I don't have the link handy but one of the people tasked with artist relations posted about how it was basically not happening 6 weeks ago when he quit. He mentioned they were so incompetent that they didn't even make him sign an NDA.
  - eli 9y ago
    Here you go: http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas-disaster.html http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas... (And the author is a she)
    - sanswork 9y ago
      Thank you for the link and the correction.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - empath75 9y ago
    I know someone on one of the booking agencies involved. They insisted that all the DJ's get paid up front. So they basically all got a free vacation to Miami.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  > It turns out that the logistics of throwing giant festivals in remote locations are difficult! Who would have guessed? 2017 is the "back to school" year. Things people have learned so far are "harder than they thought": - health care reform - large scale events I look forward to seeing what knowledge gets (re)discovered next
  - alistproducer2 9y ago
    Also the presidency
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      And Brexit.
  - stouset 9y ago
    Don't forget to add to the list: - NATO - NAFTA - Chinese / Korean relations - Department of Energy
- aaron695 9y ago
  Other than a dig at '"plug-and-play" trips to Burning Man' which is a tired point that point of fact have always been part of Burning Man more so than the people now who are going to be cool and not liking it, not sure of the point? As you say it's schadenfreude, nothing at all to be proud of? True it's an emotion that we all have, don't deny it, but to revel in the failure of things is pretty negative. 'deeper investigative reporting' is just people fucked up big time. There is nothing to learn at this level, you/we are just loving schadenfreude is what's really going on.
- droithomme 9y ago
  "It turns out that the logistics of throwing giant festivals in remote locations are difficult!" I agree with your statement, but I'm not even sure it applies here. The organizers were charging up to $400,000 a ticket (!) including promises of chartered planes and geodesic domes. They provided none of it, the location is described as "dangerous", and it appears no performers showed up. But they did provide some sort of commercial flights back, which probably cost about $199 each. Sounds like a profitable scheme, particularly if the organizers are basically unknown and now simple disappear with the cash.
  - tim333 9y ago
    It does have the look of a scam to steal the money. I mean if they were in any way decent you'd think they'd have shipped food and some of the other stuff they promised.
  - k-mcgrady 9y ago
    They've already stated they're refunding everyone and providing VIP passes to next year's event (doubt that last bit will happen). As for 'disappearing' one of the organizers is Ja Rule a very well known hip-hop artist so unlikely.
    - filmgirlcw 9y ago
      If you think Ja Rule won't just let the business entity declare bankruptcy while he continues to tweet "NOT MY FAULT" because he used to have hits (the last time he charted was 2004), you are very naive. It seems very unlikely that everyone who paid will get their money back. Ironically, it's probably the people that paid the most/have the most "influence" will be reimbursed the fastest (if at all), because the "organizers" were most assuredly obsessed with status. The people that paid the least/have the least will almost definitely be the most screwed. They were asking people to sign pieces of paper for refunds. Come on. The co-founder of the event has a history of over-promising and under-delivering [1], Ja Rule hasn't had a hit in 13 years and is irrelevant, and the only people that probably got paid upfront were the models [2] that posted on Instagram but were then warned not to come to Miami [3]. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/magnises-complaints-from-members-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/magnises-complaints-from-memb... [2]: https://news.vice.com/story/fyre-festivals-25-year-old-organizer-this-is-the-worst-day-of-my-life https://news.vice.com/story/fyre-festivals-25-year-old-organ... [3]: http://pagesix.com/2017/04/28/a-listers-told-to-avoid-disastrous-fyre-festival-before-it-began/ http://pagesix.com/2017/04/28/a-listers-told-to-avoid-disast...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
erik_landerholm 9y ago
Other than the fact this story makes us all giggle...who cares?
- Jake232 9y ago
  People who bought tickets?
- iamben 9y ago
  Yeah, kinda cold. We all want to spend our cash on fun things. It sucks when it's not fun, and it's worse so when it's dangerous and a disaster.
- funkyy 9y ago
  It works like a warning to people, information that this stuff is happening.
- 4rt 9y ago
  it reminded me of theranos, but maybe only because it's on HN.
- strken 9y ago
  It's certainly a great example of why to fail fast.
- zzalpha 9y ago
  Well, this is a great example of how not to deliver a minimum viable product...
  - protomyth 9y ago
    And it shows not to believe your own hype no matter how much you generate. Hype doesn't deliver the MVP, logistics and execution deliver the MVP. Although people paying that kind of money want a tad bit more than minimum. [edit] I really don't want to make fun of other people's misfortune, but I couldn't help but think that would have made an awesome setting for a sequel to Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.
  - 9y ago
jodrellblank 9y ago
If you like reading about festival fails, on a smaller, less-grand, scale there's 'pizza-and-music' festival MySliceFest of last year - http://www.methodsunsound.com/myslicefest-london-review/ http://www.methodsunsound.com/myslicefest-london-review/
- sanswork 9y ago
  Toronto seems to have about 5 food festival failures every summer. The last one I remember being everywhere on social media was a grilled cheese one. But there are numerous food truck ones where almost everyone runs out of food or line ups are multi-hour affairs. I'd thought it an impossible task to put on a good food based festival for a long time but Gilroy did a pretty good job with their Garlic festival. The trick seemed to be have about 5 stalls for every vendor and stick them in opposite edges so if the line is long at the Garlic Ice Cream booth you just keep walking around the edge a bit to the next booth from the same company selling the same stuff.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    I've always wanted to go to that festival. Maybe next year. I've seen some pretty epic failures, especially if they do good early on and get too much exposure. There was a garlic festival in the Hudson Valley that got way too much exposure on Food Network and was turned into an overcrowded nightmare. (Amplified by the number of Manhattanitrs out of their native environment) Another one was a food truck festival where they spread the thing out too wide, so you had to be on a death march to actually see everything!
  - nradov 9y ago
    The Gilroy Garlic Festival has been running for decades now. They've had plenty of time to work out the bugs.
  - sndean 9y ago
    > where almost everyone runs out of food or line ups are multi-hour affairs. Yeah, this seems to be getting more common (maybe because the people running the festivals make a nice profit?). I was at a hot wings festival recently. In a two-hour line for 4 wings. Then they ran out of wings, beer, and all liquids, including water. It ended up being ~$10/wing, 1 wing/hour.
nsxwolf 9y ago
I love the pictures. It looks like they built a terrifying hellscape in the middle of paradise.
walterbell 9y ago
From Bahamian paper, http://www.tribune242.com/news/2017/apr/28/tribune-comment-fyre-festival-organisers-showed-di/ http://www.tribune242.com/news/2017/apr/28/tribune-comment-f... "... those who met with the organisers of the Fyre Festival shared that the timeframe was far too short for such an ambitious event ... organisers were again advised to reschedule the event to avoid competing with the famous 60 and more-year-old George Town regatta ... this Regatta is the highlight of the George Town social calendar. All hotel rooms, transportation, taxis and majority of the rental houses are booked years in advance for this week. Clearly, this would pose a logistical nightmare and preclude any additional tourists or locals from attending such an event as Fyre Festival."
downandout 9y ago
This festival has ignited a Twitter war between the haves and the have nots. One particularly tone deaf tweet (if you read her entire feed over the last 24 hours, you will understand why poor/middle class people dislike most outrageously rich people and vice versa): https://twitter.com/storeyfrizzell/status/858091444275302400 https://twitter.com/storeyfrizzell/status/858091444275302400
- freditup 9y ago
  I think it's a parody account, right? > I'd rather be on a yacht out of touch with reality. We all our preferences; some just are unable to have them > Just bc I'm rich doesn't mean I don't have problems. In fact I've been devastated about the furniture my decorator chose > I'm funemloyed, much better than actually being employed. Try it sometime...if you can Regardless, in general, disliking people just because they're rich seems unhelpful and a quick way to jealously and discontentment. Being angered by wealthy individuals who actively abuse those with less is an entirely different story though.
  - downandout 9y ago
    I looked through it and it appears not to be. My first impression was similar to yours, but all was normal on the account until the Fyre Festival and she began complaining about the conditions and how she was having problems getting her father's jet in to pick her up. Friends of hers also had private jets come get them. The things you posted were in response to criticism of her wealth and I think at that point she became angry and started going into full snob-mode. I didn't say that I dislike rich people, I was just saying that a mutual hatred between classes seems to be common in today's America. Her recent Twitter feed puts that on full display.
    - freditup 9y ago
      My apologies, I didn't mean to imply that you dislike rich people, or anything about you personally! My comments were just reflecting on my own experiences of feeling antipathy towards those with more and trying to figure out what's productive and what's unhealthy.
Theodores 9y ago
Each year there is guaranteed to be a 'winter wonderland' event with Santa, the Elves and everything else Christmas, only for it to go the way of the Fyre Festival and become newsworthy. Typical headlines will involve the elves sat around smoking with no snow anywhere on site and the general appearance of the 'wonderland' being more like a refugee camp. Some recent years, found with zero Google-fu: 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10518992/Winter-Wonderland-in-Milton-Keynes-cancelled-after-complaints-over-ice-rink-with-no-ice.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10518992/Winter-Wonde... 'Poundland Santa' - funny!!! 2014: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11248745/Laurence-Llewelyn-Bowens-winter-wonderland-told-to-shut.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11248745/Laure... 'a visit to Father Christmas will never be the same again...' 2008: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090931/Furious-parents-attack-Santa-elves-tempers-fray-Winter-blunderland-theme-park.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090931/Furious-pare... 'Challenging: The 'Nativity scene' could only be reached across a muddy field' 2016: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bad-santa-gets-sack-smoking-9304456 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bad-santa-gets-sack-smo... 'One mum who visited the Christmas gala event in Cumbria, which cost £25 for a family of four, said her kids had more fun walking home' Clearly this is a list that gets added to every year and I am wondering whether this would make an interesting day out, to go to a real life version of Banksy's take on a theme park. The failed festival is in the same league however I think there is added reason for failure. Back in the day of illegal raves there was no option of failure because people would bring their own entertainment (yes, probably drugs) and be prepared for no facilities except for a sound system or two. Events were participatory, people got on with it and didn't wait around expecting to be entertained.
- strathmeyer 9y ago
  It's an old scam, Bob Dylan sung a song about it in the sixties called "Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues"
alistproducer2 9y ago
The Reddit dedicated to this showed there was an article in the huffpo and a Twitter account (something like @fyrefraud) that have been screaming for months that this festival was an obvious scam. If you know what to look for, a lot of outcomes are not some giant mystery. In isolation, human behavior is actually quite predictable; only in the aggregate does it get difficult to predict. Edit: I went through my browser history and the Twitter handle is correct.the article was actually on BuzzFeed but it's been scrubbed since last night. The author's name is Madeline Scott and the title started with "is fyre festival the next big music event or..." Maybe there's a cahe of the article somewhere?
- oomkiller 9y ago
  Archive of article: http://archive.is/ts6kN http://archive.is/ts6kN
  - alistproducer2 9y ago
    Nice! Thanks. How did u find that?
    - oomkiller 9y ago
      Copied and pasted the quote into Google, with quotation marks. It was on the front page but not the top result. Wayback Machine has it too, but this archive.is (A site I've never used before) is a much higher quality archive.
  - retube 9y ago
    Both Sky broadband and 02 mobile are blocking this domain saying it's dodgy
    - philippnagel 9y ago
      Where are you located (approximately ofc.)?
sigi45 9y ago
Why do i have to read about some stupid rich shit failed luxury music festival on reddit, hackernews, at some random website and a german newspaper? who cares? :( Rich people got disappointed, okay.
- heyalexej 9y ago
  Are you saying that there's a certain level of wealth that makes getting scammed okay? Just so people can prepare themselves to not get too "rich", what is that threshold?
  - al-xss 9y ago
    Obviously, the threshold is $1 richer than me
  - sigi45 9y ago
    I'm saying that it doesn't belong on hacker news or news papers.
cmoscoso 9y ago
what's the relationship with HN?
- gt2 9y ago
  Fyre app is tech startup, also Fyre festival was a project, which probably has a lot of things in common with other types of projects.
bane 9y ago
This sounds like a repeat of the Dashcon fiasco. Complete with overpromised celebrities who never show up, captive audience, and underdelivered entertainment venues.
m3kw9 9y ago
It happens all the time even in small scale. One of the food fests for example, when I got there, there were foods that had nothing to do with the theme and they started mark up prices on the spot because there wasn't enough. Never mind I had to pay to get in on the first place and the food was horrible.
Animats 9y ago
As a followup, the New York Post reports that the Fyre company is facing an employee revolt. If the paychecks aren't delivered today, a mass exodus is expected.[1] The company may not make it to Monday. [1] http://nypost.com/2017/05/04/fyre-festival-organizer-is-facing-an-employee-revolt/ http://nypost.com/2017/05/04/fyre-festival-organizer-is-faci...

171 points by ljk 9y ago

The number one issue with this festival for those of us in the Caribbean (and those of us who are also involved in the entertainment industry) is that this casts a very negative image on festivals here in general. This is in spite of the fact that throughout the region, much larger and more elaborate events occur frequently, e.g. carnival in Trinidad (and everywhere else), St. Lucia Jazz Fest, Reggae Sumfest, SXM, countless large sporting events like the ICC Cricket World Cup, etc. I'm performing at a new one called Tmrw.Tday in Negril in two weeks - luckily the Fyre thing happened too late to affect ticket sales for that one I think.

maxander 9y ago

For everyone who hates the "plug-and-play" trips to Burning Man set up for rich kids, this story is the schadenfreude of the year. It turns out that the logistics of throwing giant festivals in remote locations are difficult! Who would have guessed? I look forward to the deeper investigative reporting on precisely how that mess worked out as badly as it did, but the combination of promise-vs-reality mismatch and the rough PR afterwards suggests incompetence on all levels.

sanswork 9y ago
I don't have the link handy but one of the people tasked with artist relations posted about how it was basically not happening 6 weeks ago when he quit. He mentioned they were so incompetent that they didn't even make him sign an NDA.
- eli 9y ago
  Here you go: http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas-disaster.html http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas... (And the author is a she)
  - sanswork 9y ago
    Thank you for the link and the correction.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- empath75 9y ago
  I know someone on one of the booking agencies involved. They insisted that all the DJ's get paid up front. So they basically all got a free vacation to Miami.
nebabyte 9y ago
> It turns out that the logistics of throwing giant festivals in remote locations are difficult! Who would have guessed? 2017 is the "back to school" year. Things people have learned so far are "harder than they thought": - health care reform - large scale events I look forward to seeing what knowledge gets (re)discovered next
- alistproducer2 9y ago
  Also the presidency
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    And Brexit.
- stouset 9y ago
  Don't forget to add to the list: - NATO - NAFTA - Chinese / Korean relations - Department of Energy
aaron695 9y ago
Other than a dig at '"plug-and-play" trips to Burning Man' which is a tired point that point of fact have always been part of Burning Man more so than the people now who are going to be cool and not liking it, not sure of the point? As you say it's schadenfreude, nothing at all to be proud of? True it's an emotion that we all have, don't deny it, but to revel in the failure of things is pretty negative. 'deeper investigative reporting' is just people fucked up big time. There is nothing to learn at this level, you/we are just loving schadenfreude is what's really going on.
droithomme 9y ago
"It turns out that the logistics of throwing giant festivals in remote locations are difficult!" I agree with your statement, but I'm not even sure it applies here. The organizers were charging up to $400,000 a ticket (!) including promises of chartered planes and geodesic domes. They provided none of it, the location is described as "dangerous", and it appears no performers showed up. But they did provide some sort of commercial flights back, which probably cost about $199 each. Sounds like a profitable scheme, particularly if the organizers are basically unknown and now simple disappear with the cash.
- tim333 9y ago
  It does have the look of a scam to steal the money. I mean if they were in any way decent you'd think they'd have shipped food and some of the other stuff they promised.
- k-mcgrady 9y ago
  They've already stated they're refunding everyone and providing VIP passes to next year's event (doubt that last bit will happen). As for 'disappearing' one of the organizers is Ja Rule a very well known hip-hop artist so unlikely.
  - filmgirlcw 9y ago
    If you think Ja Rule won't just let the business entity declare bankruptcy while he continues to tweet "NOT MY FAULT" because he used to have hits (the last time he charted was 2004), you are very naive. It seems very unlikely that everyone who paid will get their money back. Ironically, it's probably the people that paid the most/have the most "influence" will be reimbursed the fastest (if at all), because the "organizers" were most assuredly obsessed with status. The people that paid the least/have the least will almost definitely be the most screwed. They were asking people to sign pieces of paper for refunds. Come on. The co-founder of the event has a history of over-promising and under-delivering [1], Ja Rule hasn't had a hit in 13 years and is irrelevant, and the only people that probably got paid upfront were the models [2] that posted on Instagram but were then warned not to come to Miami [3]. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/magnises-complaints-from-members-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/magnises-complaints-from-memb... [2]: https://news.vice.com/story/fyre-festivals-25-year-old-organizer-this-is-the-worst-day-of-my-life https://news.vice.com/story/fyre-festivals-25-year-old-organ... [3]: http://pagesix.com/2017/04/28/a-listers-told-to-avoid-disastrous-fyre-festival-before-it-began/ http://pagesix.com/2017/04/28/a-listers-told-to-avoid-disast...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

erik_landerholm 9y ago

Other than the fact this story makes us all giggle...who cares?

Jake232 9y ago
People who bought tickets?
iamben 9y ago
Yeah, kinda cold. We all want to spend our cash on fun things. It sucks when it's not fun, and it's worse so when it's dangerous and a disaster.
funkyy 9y ago
It works like a warning to people, information that this stuff is happening.
4rt 9y ago
it reminded me of theranos, but maybe only because it's on HN.
strken 9y ago
It's certainly a great example of why to fail fast.
zzalpha 9y ago
Well, this is a great example of how not to deliver a minimum viable product...
- protomyth 9y ago
  And it shows not to believe your own hype no matter how much you generate. Hype doesn't deliver the MVP, logistics and execution deliver the MVP. Although people paying that kind of money want a tad bit more than minimum. [edit] I really don't want to make fun of other people's misfortune, but I couldn't help but think that would have made an awesome setting for a sequel to Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.
- 9y ago

jodrellblank 9y ago

If you like reading about festival fails, on a smaller, less-grand, scale there's 'pizza-and-music' festival MySliceFest of last year - http://www.methodsunsound.com/myslicefest-london-review/ http://www.methodsunsound.com/myslicefest-london-review/

sanswork 9y ago
Toronto seems to have about 5 food festival failures every summer. The last one I remember being everywhere on social media was a grilled cheese one. But there are numerous food truck ones where almost everyone runs out of food or line ups are multi-hour affairs. I'd thought it an impossible task to put on a good food based festival for a long time but Gilroy did a pretty good job with their Garlic festival. The trick seemed to be have about 5 stalls for every vendor and stick them in opposite edges so if the line is long at the Garlic Ice Cream booth you just keep walking around the edge a bit to the next booth from the same company selling the same stuff.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  I've always wanted to go to that festival. Maybe next year. I've seen some pretty epic failures, especially if they do good early on and get too much exposure. There was a garlic festival in the Hudson Valley that got way too much exposure on Food Network and was turned into an overcrowded nightmare. (Amplified by the number of Manhattanitrs out of their native environment) Another one was a food truck festival where they spread the thing out too wide, so you had to be on a death march to actually see everything!
- nradov 9y ago
  The Gilroy Garlic Festival has been running for decades now. They've had plenty of time to work out the bugs.
- sndean 9y ago
  > where almost everyone runs out of food or line ups are multi-hour affairs. Yeah, this seems to be getting more common (maybe because the people running the festivals make a nice profit?). I was at a hot wings festival recently. In a two-hour line for 4 wings. Then they ran out of wings, beer, and all liquids, including water. It ended up being ~$10/wing, 1 wing/hour.

nsxwolf 9y ago

I love the pictures. It looks like they built a terrifying hellscape in the middle of paradise.

walterbell 9y ago

From Bahamian paper, http://www.tribune242.com/news/2017/apr/28/tribune-comment-fyre-festival-organisers-showed-di/ http://www.tribune242.com/news/2017/apr/28/tribune-comment-f... "... those who met with the organisers of the Fyre Festival shared that the timeframe was far too short for such an ambitious event ... organisers were again advised to reschedule the event to avoid competing with the famous 60 and more-year-old George Town regatta ... this Regatta is the highlight of the George Town social calendar. All hotel rooms, transportation, taxis and majority of the rental houses are booked years in advance for this week. Clearly, this would pose a logistical nightmare and preclude any additional tourists or locals from attending such an event as Fyre Festival."

downandout 9y ago

This festival has ignited a Twitter war between the haves and the have nots. One particularly tone deaf tweet (if you read her entire feed over the last 24 hours, you will understand why poor/middle class people dislike most outrageously rich people and vice versa): https://twitter.com/storeyfrizzell/status/858091444275302400 https://twitter.com/storeyfrizzell/status/858091444275302400

freditup 9y ago
I think it's a parody account, right? > I'd rather be on a yacht out of touch with reality. We all our preferences; some just are unable to have them > Just bc I'm rich doesn't mean I don't have problems. In fact I've been devastated about the furniture my decorator chose > I'm funemloyed, much better than actually being employed. Try it sometime...if you can Regardless, in general, disliking people just because they're rich seems unhelpful and a quick way to jealously and discontentment. Being angered by wealthy individuals who actively abuse those with less is an entirely different story though.
- downandout 9y ago
  I looked through it and it appears not to be. My first impression was similar to yours, but all was normal on the account until the Fyre Festival and she began complaining about the conditions and how she was having problems getting her father's jet in to pick her up. Friends of hers also had private jets come get them. The things you posted were in response to criticism of her wealth and I think at that point she became angry and started going into full snob-mode. I didn't say that I dislike rich people, I was just saying that a mutual hatred between classes seems to be common in today's America. Her recent Twitter feed puts that on full display.
  - freditup 9y ago
    My apologies, I didn't mean to imply that you dislike rich people, or anything about you personally! My comments were just reflecting on my own experiences of feeling antipathy towards those with more and trying to figure out what's productive and what's unhealthy.

Theodores 9y ago

Each year there is guaranteed to be a 'winter wonderland' event with Santa, the Elves and everything else Christmas, only for it to go the way of the Fyre Festival and become newsworthy. Typical headlines will involve the elves sat around smoking with no snow anywhere on site and the general appearance of the 'wonderland' being more like a refugee camp. Some recent years, found with zero Google-fu: 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10518992/Winter-Wonderland-in-Milton-Keynes-cancelled-after-complaints-over-ice-rink-with-no-ice.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10518992/Winter-Wonde... 'Poundland Santa' - funny!!! 2014: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11248745/Laurence-Llewelyn-Bowens-winter-wonderland-told-to-shut.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11248745/Laure... 'a visit to Father Christmas will never be the same again...' 2008: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090931/Furious-parents-attack-Santa-elves-tempers-fray-Winter-blunderland-theme-park.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090931/Furious-pare... 'Challenging: The 'Nativity scene' could only be reached across a muddy field' 2016: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bad-santa-gets-sack-smoking-9304456 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bad-santa-gets-sack-smo... 'One mum who visited the Christmas gala event in Cumbria, which cost £25 for a family of four, said her kids had more fun walking home' Clearly this is a list that gets added to every year and I am wondering whether this would make an interesting day out, to go to a real life version of Banksy's take on a theme park. The failed festival is in the same league however I think there is added reason for failure. Back in the day of illegal raves there was no option of failure because people would bring their own entertainment (yes, probably drugs) and be prepared for no facilities except for a sound system or two. Events were participatory, people got on with it and didn't wait around expecting to be entertained.

strathmeyer 9y ago
It's an old scam, Bob Dylan sung a song about it in the sixties called "Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues"

alistproducer2 9y ago

The Reddit dedicated to this showed there was an article in the huffpo and a Twitter account (something like @fyrefraud) that have been screaming for months that this festival was an obvious scam. If you know what to look for, a lot of outcomes are not some giant mystery. In isolation, human behavior is actually quite predictable; only in the aggregate does it get difficult to predict. Edit: I went through my browser history and the Twitter handle is correct.the article was actually on BuzzFeed but it's been scrubbed since last night. The author's name is Madeline Scott and the title started with "is fyre festival the next big music event or..." Maybe there's a cahe of the article somewhere?

oomkiller 9y ago
Archive of article: http://archive.is/ts6kN http://archive.is/ts6kN
- alistproducer2 9y ago
  Nice! Thanks. How did u find that?
  - oomkiller 9y ago
    Copied and pasted the quote into Google, with quotation marks. It was on the front page but not the top result. Wayback Machine has it too, but this archive.is (A site I've never used before) is a much higher quality archive.
- retube 9y ago
  Both Sky broadband and 02 mobile are blocking this domain saying it's dodgy
  - philippnagel 9y ago
    Where are you located (approximately ofc.)?

sigi45 9y ago

Why do i have to read about some stupid rich shit failed luxury music festival on reddit, hackernews, at some random website and a german newspaper? who cares? :( Rich people got disappointed, okay.

heyalexej 9y ago
Are you saying that there's a certain level of wealth that makes getting scammed okay? Just so people can prepare themselves to not get too "rich", what is that threshold?
- al-xss 9y ago
  Obviously, the threshold is $1 richer than me
- sigi45 9y ago
  I'm saying that it doesn't belong on hacker news or news papers.

cmoscoso 9y ago

what's the relationship with HN?

gt2 9y ago
Fyre app is tech startup, also Fyre festival was a project, which probably has a lot of things in common with other types of projects.

bane 9y ago

This sounds like a repeat of the Dashcon fiasco. Complete with overpromised celebrities who never show up, captive audience, and underdelivered entertainment venues.

m3kw9 9y ago

It happens all the time even in small scale. One of the food fests for example, when I got there, there were foods that had nothing to do with the theme and they started mark up prices on the spot because there wasn't enough. Never mind I had to pay to get in on the first place and the food was horrible.

Animats 9y ago

As a followup, the New York Post reports that the Fyre company is facing an employee revolt. If the paychecks aren't delivered today, a mass exodus is expected.[1] The company may not make it to Monday. [1] http://nypost.com/2017/05/04/fyre-festival-organizer-is-facing-an-employee-revolt/ http://nypost.com/2017/05/04/fyre-festival-organizer-is-faci...