My Final Thoughts on the TomorrowWorld Disaster
This past weekend, Tomorrow World hosted it’s 3rd festival in upstate Georgia, tucked away in Chattahoochie Hills in the middle of nowhere. The prior years were nothing but success and a weekend of good vibes, but this year took a drastic plummet from a weekend of paradise to a weekend of pure hell for thousands of attendees.
Due to weather conditions, TomorrowWorld restricted attendance of the Sunday festivities to only a select camp ground, leaving the rest of the ravers to find their own methods of transportation home and away from the premises. Prior to this, Saturday night’s transportation took a turn for the worst when shuttles and buses couldn’t access the visitors requests.
According to Maxim, this left thousands upon thousands of unhappy people to walk down the highway in search of a ride. Communication was poor between authorities and attendees, and this left clueless people wandering the roads and sleeping atop cars in the cold, rainy atmosphere.
YourEDM.com released an article revealing TomorrowWorld’s apology, their explanation for the events that took place, and their regret for having to put festival goers through a less than enjoyable weekend. EDM headliner Kaskade was noted coming down on the festival’s handling of this situation, and a majority of those that attended the abbreviated festival had nothing but negative things to say about this weekend.
It’s an unfortunate mix of elements that turned into what every raver’s worst case scenario would be. If you’ve ever been to a festival that is held outside during any point of summer, you know that there is a risk for rain and and weather. Ultra Music Festival has been through it, Sunset Music Festival has cleared out the crowd in shelters during thunderstorms, and now TomorrowWorld has taken the cake for the absolute most miserable festival malfunction.
Mother nature can sometimes be the biggest jerk there is, and this past weekend was a horrible reminder that festivals aren’t always a safe haven, but simply an excluded chunk of reality.
But for TomorrowWorld to not have had some sort of emergency plan to evacuate participants is inexcusable. Yes, the conditions may have been dangerous, but any party host knows that you have to plan for the worst, even if there’s a .5% chance that it’ll happen. The same concept defends the reasoning behind CPR courses and insurance policies.
Perhaps it was in the best interest to limit access to the festival, but before doing so, transportation should have been organized prior to even publishing the announcement. Further, organization of transportation Saturday night should have been solidified, rain or shine. Unless endless tornadoes continued to touch down or a hurricane came over the land, there really is no excuse for the lack of transportation.
And finally, regarding the “apologies” released, it’ll be interesting to see if any more will be released to justify why leaving thousands upon thousands of people to be left in the dark, without a ride home Saturday night, and no festival to return to in the morning.
