Before I start, I fully expect some who mostly, or only goes to Ultra to want to tell me how wrong I am, but if so, can I invite you to look at my other festival reports and try other festivals like EDC Vegas or Beyond Wonderland Socal, or Dreamstate Socal, and then come back and tell me what you think? And if you have been to many other festivals (good for you), if you feel my review is blatantly unfair or incorrect, please send me feedback (DM on FB or IG) and I will definitely hear what you have to say as well as take fixes/corrections.
Let's mix things up for fun and start with the end :)
So, let's start with the end ;)
Should you go, Would I go back?
I try to be positive and look at the bright side, I can't say Ultra was a bad experience like Creamfields, or Lumi, both in great part due to terrible security teams, but overall it was on the disappointing side for a top world festival that's been around for so long. Why is that?
They are stuck in a place that's too small. I'm told they did try to move to the island across the bridge, but that did not work out.
I actually feel they did about as good a job with the footprint they have, clearly they had many years to refine it. Sound bleed was limited, at least 3 stages were quite good, but the other ones were ok-ish at best, like the psytrance stage on day 2 that had two big trees in front of it and blocked most pictures of the DJs and LED board with their name
Ok, except for mainstage. It was borderline a death trap if you were on the wrong side and were hoping to get out during a bit set. Getting around was almost impossible during the bigger sets at night. Worse, if you were in the middle and you did secure an ok spot, there was a constant stream of people crossing and pushing in all directions, pretty much 0 PLUR on that front
I do want to give thanks to all the fine folks who did spread PLUR and smiles, but there weren't enough of them.
And back to the mainstage problem, there were 2 stags on the other side, and they were almost impossible to get to or out of without getting past mainstage, which was super hard at times. There was no path around or behind that could get you across (or at least none that I found).
This is where you'd tell me I should have paid for VIP, which given it was over $1000 felt unreasonable given that Ultra is nowhere close to EDC and does not warrant prices like this, I've read that the experience in VIP was also not great (too many people) but I didn't get to check for myself.
oh, did I saw $1000 for VIP? It was actually between $1500 and $2000, a complete joke
The ASOT stage was actually ok and easy to get in and out, although the entire dancefloor was quite slanted which can be an issue if you're actually dancing
The techno stage (Resistance) was quite decent and the only one that survived during the terrible rain storm on sunday
Yeah, the rain, it's florida, the stage I usually avoid because I'm not a fan of unpredictable terrible weather and hurricanes. Despite Ultra being early in the season, as weather is worsening and becoming more unpredictable worldwide, last year had torrential rains during the event, and this year was even worse, 4H of very heavy rain, rain that was so bad that all stages shut down but one, and the last one was only kept running thanks to the heroics of the tech steams that were literally dealing with enough water to collapse the entire structure and flood the DJ booth
So the sunday lineup was greatly impacted, many DJs never got to play their sets, and unfortunately Ultra never pushed schedule updates to their own app (apparently you had to know to go on some website that did have an updated lineup somewhere).
Speaking about the app, it was plain bad for a festival of that caliber. It had one job, to show the schedule and let you save what you wanted to see, and then just show that. It failed miserably at that one job on both Android and IOS. Worse, on Android the app really completely did not even show Armin playing mainstage at all, despite multiple attempts on several days. Come on Ultra, you can do better
just to show I'm not joking, notice the hole at 1750 after Morten, that's where Armin was...
Another thing I was not overly impressed with was the security at the entrance. They were not creamfields bad, or lumi bad, but the security line on Friday was pretty ridiculous (almost 1h30) probably because they were too thorough until they were told not to on the 2nd day, but come on, it's not the first time they do this. At the same time, there were not enough lines for a festival that big, hence the ridiculous lines with no fewer than 4 helicopters hovering and recording this entire line barely moving, probably for local TV news (but with 4 different helis, just to make sure). Kind of pathetic, really.
I got lucky with security on day 1, but day 2, it got down to "why do you have 5 USB cables, you need to leave some behind" as well as "you have too many safety pins (aroudn 10) in this tiny plastic bag, you need to leave half behind" (barely paraphrased). They were nice enough to let me in with my 2 phones, 2 handheld cameras, and multiple USB battery packs, as well as the LED outfit (unlike creamfields and lumi), but they made me leave behind LED shoelaces, a backup small raspberry pi microcomputer (size of a matchbox), and other semi expensive gear I had to abandon in a plastic bag outside and hope it would still be there on my way out. Of course, my brand new LED outfit I was testing, broke during the day and was super hard to fix without all the things I was forced to leave outside (I then had to leave early that night to get them back before security left and got lucky it didn't rain), I totally understand security guidelines are not trivial and I bring random looking unusual stuff :) but they sure acted very random and confused about what to do. I used the opportunity that I had to get my bag back on night 2 to show them why I was carrying that stuff (i.e. my outfit working at night), and after that they were cool and nice the next day. Thanks to them.
always good to make friends :)
but earlier that day, I really struggled to fix my brand new LED outfit without my tools. Not fun...
and I still need to re-state that the tech teams did a pretty incredible job given all the challenges they have to deal with, including massive rain.
as for the money machine part, it feels that they could be more generous. For starters, a few DJ'ing at the event only got a single day wristband. Not even a wristband to go to the other 2 days. That feels petty :-
But yeah, unless you live in Miami, you should go to Beyond Wonderland instead, it's not even close ;) (hell, even if you live in Miami, unless you can't fly, you really should consider Beyond, it's so much better on about all levels). And seriously, if you don't find $2000 insulting for VIP tickets for an overcrowded show in a small park, I'm not sure what to say...
All that said, let's get back to reviewing the Ultra Festival itself:
Grounds
as mentioned above, getting in sucked. Almost 1h30 in line to get through security, unacceptable
finally through, but took so long that we missed the entire first set plus half of Ruben's set
the park is otherwise pretty
it's fun to party in such a location with such a background
People
as I mentioned, Ultra could use more PLUR, but there were still some folks who were wearing fun outfits, and kandi trading opportunities ;)
The Torrential Rain on Day 3
Day 3 was a complete clusterfudge. It was raining hard, and I mean hard for hours in a row. We were denied entry for 30mn or so while lightening was going on, and then they did let us in, but only one stage was running, and barely given the Noah's Ark levels of rain:
yeah, you don't say...
'friday' was a mistake, it was sunday
that's the amount of water in the air
eventually water got in and was trying to flood the DJ booth
Check out these 3 IG reels:
https://www.instagram.com/ledtranceguy/reel/DH1bbOGRcj9
https://www.instagram.com/ledtranceguy/reel/DH1hHhrRnJx
https://www.instagram.com/ledtranceguy/reel/DH1ite5RSwh
The rest of Ultra
So, let's look at the 3 days of ASOT:
the ASOT worldwide stage was actually quite decent, but it was sad to arrive 90mn late and miss
missed half of Ruben de Ronde due to the very slow security, but the 2nd half was very enjoyable
Nifra went more into Techno, as she has been doing recently
Miss Monique was playing at the real Techno stage, next door
live stage
then, back for Maddix
the visuals were not bad
ending with a b2b2b
The next day was psytrance day:
unfortunate stage location with trees in front of it
mainstage earlier in the afternoon, was bearable, and honestly the only time it was worth being there. After that, it was so overcrowded that it was unbearable:
randomly found Armin playing at mainstage, which was not announced at all in the android app ("you had one job, ultra...")"
Didn't stay that much longer that evening since security had half my stuff (hundreds of dollars worse) at the gate and were going to leave at 22:30 from what they said, so I left early to get my bag back, but that was a plus since the afterparty at Otra was loads of fun
After the Day 3 rain I described above, many hours later, the rain subsided, but it took a while for the stages to re-open:
We still got a few fireworks at night:
the drone show was not fully visible unless you were at mainstage, which was flooded and crowded
Ended the night with Above and Beyond, but left 15mn before the end to avoid being left with no ride out at all (not enough ubers):
And that qas it for Ultra!
Conclusions/Suggestions
Honestly, Ultra has been running for long enough, I doubt that they care about feedback. They have a money machine like tomorrowland (except TMRL is actually not overcrowded in comparison and the footprint is many times better), the place is small enough that even by overselling it, it's not really that many people, so if they lose a bunch, more will come. That said, if I have to list just a few:
the current location is too small for the amount of people coming. It's a disservice to people who buy tickets to sell that many for that location
more security lines to improve flow and maybe a bit of extra training for them on what true threats are (and that's not an easy topic). Taking USB cables or replacement LED shoelaces from someone to prevent risk of strangling (and I mean, come on, how many people have been strangled by shoelaces in festivals) is utterly pointless if they are wearing shoelaces already and those shoes are allowed in.
waterproofing more stages?
offering a lot more covered areas given the very obvious chance of terrible rain.
For attendees, as I said before, the obvious answers are to go to Beyond Wonderland Socal and EDC Vegas instead.
But how about WMC, Winter Music Conference
Well, half unexpectedly, as much as Ultra was not bad but not super enjoyable either, the parties before/after were actually a lot of fun. It was nice to be able to hang out with all the DJs that were in town anyway due to WMC. I wouldn't say it's worth for me to go back to Miami just for the out of UMC, but if going to Miami is easy and doesn't conflict with snowboarding plans ;) it's a fair amount of club parties all in one place over a few days.
Thursday: Maddix OTC at Mad Club Wynwood
Friday: Gabriel and Dresden, Aly and Fila, Ferry Corsten at La Otra
Saturday: Alexander Popov, Adam Scott, Kristina Sky, John 00 Flemming, Giuseppe Ottaviani at La Otra
Sunday night had another party, but I had an early flight monday morning to go directly to tahoe to catch a snow storm :)
The parties were definitely fun, maybe not flying across the US or the world, for, but if you're already there, absolutely worth going to, and in some ways, they were more enjoyable than UMF itself.
Links
Google photos album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/giQf6qCu5xpVuzLZ9
IG stories: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17959889396912661
