Boomtown Festival, which took place in Winchester between August 10th-13th, has been criticised for an organisation failure that saw huge crowds stuck in fields without toilet or water facilities for up to eight hours.
According to the Daily Telegraph, queues appeared because the gates to the festival opened three hours later than originally planned.
A spokeswoman from the festival told the BBC that heightened security – in place after drug incidents and a fire at last year’s event – was in part to blame for the delays. She explained that the gates were delayed in opening because of recent wet weather. And this, coupled with a bigger searching operation in place for those coming to the festival, meant that people had to spend longer in queues.
People took to social media to complain about the hold-ups, however, saying that there were no toilets or water made available and there were vulnerable people waiting to get in that had no means of escape.
Festival-goer Jamie Crawford, who found himself waiting for 12 hours to make his way through the gate, said: “I queued for four hours and then gave up, and went to have some fun on the hill. I eventually made it through about 12 hours later. A few bottles of water were handed out by security but there were thousands of people waiting, so it made little difference really.”
Sadly, those who were stuck in the queue were also unable to claim a refund on their tickets as it’s the festival’s policy to only give these out in the event of a cancellation of the entire event.
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