Holy crap, what a disaster. The Fyre Festival, a new, upscale music festival set on a private island in the Exumas, has turned out to be a horrible scam. Announced a few months ago with a campaign sponsored by Instagram models and organized by Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, the festival promised attendees a luxurious experiences with ticket prices ranging from $1,500 to a whopping £250,000 that came with allegedly full-scale villas and catering.
The experienced sounded like a beachy Burning Man on paper, but the actual festival has gone up in metaphorical and nearly literal flames before it’s even officially begun. The chaos began on Thursday as attendees attempted to travel to the festival. The private island quickly reached capacity, with thousands of attendees stuck on cancelled flights with refunded tickets. To make matters worse, the state of the festival on the island turned out to be chaotic: attendees being locked in the local airport for hours, learning that their luxury cabanas were disaster relief tents, finding out many tents had not been assembled yet, having their luggage dropped in a shipping container for storage and more.
Live from Fyre Festival. https://t.co/gi9dXgQAzE
— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 28, 2017
https://twitter.com/MattHalfhill/status/857828241234460672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Farts-entertainment%2Fmusic%2Fnews%2Ffyre-festival-ja-rule-bahamas-organizers-photos-videos-food-a7707301.html
Early report is that many of the tents aren't assembled. Here's their tropical private island owned by Escobar! #FyreFestival pic.twitter.com/TNzBDbNAUJ
— FyreFestivalFraud (@FyreFraud) April 27, 2017
Expectation Vs. Reality #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/RfOpbNEdH3
— BigKidProblems (@BigKidProblems) April 28, 2017
Also, we found a notebook from one of the Fyre Fest planners on the ground. It is amazing. #fyrefestival #fyre pic.twitter.com/jFib0nO2RW
— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 28, 2017
The Notebook: Fyre Festival edition. pic.twitter.com/gjUvDvUKhW
— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 28, 2017
Blink-182 cancelled their headlining performance, and this morning the Fyre Festival’s official Twitter announced the festival would be postponed as they make efforts to get everyone home safely.
Due to unforeseen and extenuating circumstances, Fyre Festival has been fully postponed (con't)
— Fyre Festival (@fyrefestival) April 28, 2017
The full debacle has been well documented on Twitter (where it became a trending hashtag), the Fyre Festival subreddit, Instagram (ironically) and other social media platforms. It appears the experience may be getting a bit exaggerated by /r/TheDonald users aiming to sir the fire, but overall the festival has gone down as a complete disaster before it even officially began. Even the TomorrowWorld proceedings didn’t turn out this horribly.
Let’s call this festival for what it is: the Dumpster Fyre Festival.
