One of the biggest festivals I have ever attended was The Bamboozle Festival. For the 2012 year, this will be Bamboozle's 10th anniversary. This festival is located in East Rutherford, New Jersey at the Meadowlands Stadium. This past year (2011) was my first year attending the festival. Coming all the way from California, it was a big trip (as well as slightly expensive) to make. This blog post will talk about my experience at Bamboozle, as well as some tips for people coming from places other than Jersey.
My friend and I didn't start planning our trip out to Bamboozle until about 3 months before, in January. The festival was scheduled for April 29-May 1. Once we decided to go to the festival, it was necessary to save up money.
Things that needed to be purchased/planned beforehand:
-Plane ticket
-3 day pass to the festival
-Hotel
-Transportation to hotel from airport, and to the hotel to the show
I would suggest purchasing the plane ticket first. Seems common knowledge, but some people dont realize that the later you wait to purchase the ticket, the higher the price goes. I bought my plane ticket about a month and a half ahead, and the price wasn't that bad for the round trip. Secondly, I bought my concert ticket. Bamboozle has a few different options for their tickets. They have a 3 day pass as well as single day tickets. Since I was going to attend all 3 days, it made the most sense, and was cheaper to buy the 3 day pass. This ended up costing a little bit more than I had expected. When I first was planning the trip, the 3 day passes were about $89, but just like flight tickets, the longer I waited to buy it, the more expensive the passes became. For the hotel, I found one really cool option on priceline.com They offer a "pay when you stay" option, so you dont need to pay until you check in to the hotel. That helped with the cost of paying for the flight and tickets up front. The hotel we stayed at offered a free shuttle back and forth to the airport every 30 minutes, so we planned on taking the shuttle to the airport everyday and taking the amtrak to the bus station where they had busses running the stadium. This was convenient because we ended up booking a really cheap hotel in Newark, so it was about a 45 minute commute to the show.
Since the festival was 3 days long and starting on a Friday, I left on Thursday afternoon to arrive by the evening at go to the festival Friday. My friend wasn't able to go on Friday, so I flew out on my own. I actually ended up finding another girl going alone on Friday to hang out with at the show. She was from New Jersey, so she picked me up at the hotel and we drove together.
Friday:
We got to the show at about 7:00 and the first bands started playing at 6:00. The way the stadium was set up was really spread out. They have 2 mainstages, but were on opposite sides of the park, with the smaller stages, rides, foods and drink in between. There was a huge variety of people playing on Friday. We both really wanted to see Mayday Parade, but we got there late and ended up seeing only their last 2 songs. They played on one of the main stages, and it was packed! They ended their set with "Jersey," very fitting for the location. After that we saw The Ready Set. He was on the main stage, which surprised me, since he isn't that big yet. The audience definitely did gather though. This was my first real experience with the Jersey crowd. Basically...WTF. They were super rude, pushed constantly and just had..well...their typical Jersey attitude. So different than California crowds. The Ready Set put on a great set and covered the B.OB/Hayley Williams Song "Airplanes" which was a hit with the crowd. That night we also got to watch Whiz Khalifa. Lots of smoke in the air, if you know what I mean. He wasn't bad. I wasn't really there for any of the rappers, but he was really popular that night and he interacted really well with the crowd. I had actually won VIP passes to the show, so I was able to go up on a riser and see the show from above. It was awesome. We left his show early to go over to the other main stage to get ready for 30 Seconds to Mars. Jared Leto was fantastic, simply put. His voice was great. He seemed really cocky however, at least in the clothes he was wearing. Overall, Friday was definitely worth basically going on my own.
Saturday the doors opened at 2. My friend arrived at 9, so once we got ready we headed over to the stadium. First we saw Forever the Sickest Kids. They put on a kick ass show...but I got my shoes puked on. Some girl was sitting on some type of barrel about 4 rows of people ahead of me, but turned around and puked all over the ground, consquently splattering on my shoes -_- Terrible way to start the day. Afterwards we just waited around and then saw Anberlin. We didn't really know any of their songs, and the crowd didn't seem to be feeling it, so we ended up leaving early. We waited around and eventually saw Dashboard Confessionals. The crowd was also bad. Or at least, the people around us were rude and pushy. The night closed with Taking Back Sunday. I never had listened to them that much, but their fans were really hyped up and it got me in the mood to have a good time.
Sunday was by far my favorite day. Doors opened at 12. First off we saw The Ready Set, for the third day in a row. He's so cute and funny, I cant pass it up. After that we saw saw eatmewhileimhot! I actually didn't know before had that it was Christofer Drew, so when I heard people around me talking about it before the set started, I got really excited we had been standing at that stage. The show was super fun. The crowd had great energy. Drew however, took on a totally different persona compared to his more commonly known, nevershoutnever persona. He was clearly drunk or high, or a combonation of the both. He left the stage by saying "fuck you all" and flipped us off. Joke? Not sure. He put on a pretty good performance either way, and I was happy just to actually see him live for the first time. After him was the show I had been waiting for all day, Valencia. We ended up getting in the second row They are so much fun live, and the crowd rocked. After Valencia, we went over the see We the Kings. They gathered a huge crowd, but they put on an awesome show and it was worth getting pushed around for. Later that afternoon we watched Bruno Mars. We didn't even try to stand close, there was literally hundreds of people. The night ended with a performance by Lil' Wayne. There were tons of people. I was really surprised that people actually knew Lil' Wayne lyrics. Since I dont really listen to rap, when people knew songs other than his singles, I thought it was hilarious.
Making the trip all the way across the country for this festival was well worth the money. While I didn't really like the Jersey crowds, the music, lineup, company I had and overall experience I had at the festival made everything worth it.
Bitch Rate: 2/5
--Relic
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