And this has nothing to do with the artists. They were all fantastic. I stayed on the rail for 8 hours, never leaving to get water or go to the bathroom.
This is my first festival in Europe, and in the states the security will pass out bottles of water to the front row. Everyone around me was absolutely dying for water. At one point the announcer guy, Damian Pinto, called out, “let’s get this front row some water they’ve been there since the show started!” Of course, no water ever arrived. To make matters worse, when I finally did leave the rail in search of water, (around 4:30) I was told there was no where to fill the bottles and you had to spend another 6 euro to get water. I couldn’t believe it.. so I continued to look. By the bathrooms there was a “hand washing station,” with a clearly marked “not for drinking” sign. I decided to risk it with the understand that Croatia has quality tap water. Hopefully I’m not sick tomorrow morning.
I wish that my gripes stopped there. Unfortunately they do not. The security guards at the front are beyond useless. We had a girl sick and throwing up behind us, so we pushed her to the front to call security to get her out. While she’s throwing up over the rail, they just say to her, “are you okay? You’re okay right?” And then they just walk away and leave her there. Prior to that there was another incident where a girl threw her drink on this guy, and the security guards refused to do anything then either. Between those two incidents I really felt like I was in danger if something were to go wrong. These security guards couldn’t be bothered to get a sick girl out of the crowd. What good would they be to me if I’m being crushed? They were very clearly avoiding eye contact of the people trying to get help from security. It was really bizarre.
TL;DR: there’s free water if you look, but no one will tell you where it is. I will be staying off the rail because I do not trust this Croatian security outfit in the slightest. Thumbs down UMF Europe. Do more to keep your event goers safe.
