10 Ways to Make the Most of your Festival Experience
Many of you have gone to festivals and had some of the best times of your life. At times, however, I am sure you ran into long periods of time when you thought, what the hell am I doing here or someone please get me out of here. The following is a top 10 list of the ways to make the most of your festival experience:
1. Communicate! Take the time to meet your neighbors, the people in the lineup to get in, the people in the line to get food, at the porta potties, EVERYONE! Make sure you get their names, where their from, find out who they are there to see, how many years have they went to this festival, things like that. You will form instant bonds with these people and possibly make lifelong friends or connect with once a year for a number of years.
2. Bring something to share! Candy, stickers, food, drugs, an umbrella, blanket, water, beer, hacky sack, Frisbee, home made jewelry or even just your rockin’ smile or dance moves J
3. Set up camp first. This is something that I always fought against and only recently actually became a believer in this task. It is much much better to have somewhere to call your home base when you need it. If you’re like me, as soon as you arrive, you want to go and explore. If you’re also like me, you may have a “rave mom” type figure to steer you in the right direction and make you do things smarter. If you fail to do this task, you will be scrambling to set up your tent on a hot Sunday afternoon with a brain that’s too scrambled to even take your shoes off. We’ve all been there ;)
4. Have a Rave Mom. — Most crews have one. If you do not know who is your crews rave mom is, it is probably you. Who is the person who brought the most water, or remembered things like Tylenol or food. Whoever this person is, that is your rave mom. Please take their advice as it may save your life.
5. Pace yourself! — This took me 13 years to learn and unfortunately, I learned it the hard way. Treat the festival as a marathon and not a sprint. You do not want to get so fucked up on Thursday or Friday, that you cannot see your favorite DJ on Saturday or Sunday. You could miss out on your soulmate, your new best friend, or the experience of a lifetime.
6. Eat! — Somehow this one also took me 13 years to learn. In earlier years, my experience of eating at festival would be one bite of breakfast which was spit out because I was physically unable to chew. If you are having a hard time chewing or your jaw seems doesn’t want to cooperate, make smoothies your best friend. Festivals have the best smoothies and they will help keep you alive.
7. Sleep! — EACH NIGHT! — Even if just for an hour or two, it will make the blistering hot sun and severe dehydration so much more bearable. I have discovered that the optimal sleep time is at exactly 5:45AM. If you go to sleep at this time, then you will (hopefully) be asleep before the sun comes up and can sleep for approximately 2–3 hours before you are absolutely dying from the heat. If you end up dancing through this time and realize that you forgot to sleep, you should take a break and go to the car for a cat nap with the A/C on. The best part of sleeping is when you wake up, change your clothes, brush your teeth (eat!) and then it’s a brand new day and you can start over. If for some reason you fail to sleep, you will end up going to sleep the next night, way too early and missing all of your favorite DJs!
8. Take lots of pictures! — So many amazing experiences have been had at festivals and amazing connections have happened between people but none of it has been captured in a way that we can look back at it and remember. This also helps to connect with people as you can add them to Facebook or whatever you use and tag them in the pictures. This will helpfully help to form a lifelong bond and friendship that you can look back on in years to come.
9. Charge your cell phone! — Many festivals these days have a way of providing this service. You can rent battery packs, leave your phone at a vendor or take a trip down to the car to charge it there and enjoy some better temperatures. This will help you with your pictures, getting reconnected with your crew or incase there is an emergency like DJ HYPE made a surprise arrival and is playing main stage.
10. Look after one another. — This has got to be the most important step as it could save someone’s life. I don’t just mean your best friend or solid crew but if you see someone in a different campsite or by a stage that needs help, get them help. Go help sooth them, talk to them, give them water / hugs. At a festival, you are all part of the family so look out for one another because there are times when people do need medics or even ambulances or they could die. Please please please look out for them. Remember the mantra, Peace, Love, Unity & Respect. Look out for one another Fam.
This article was written on June 20, 2016 and has since been moved from my original website.
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