Coachella mayhem boils over as festival-goers brave 12-hour lines and near-record temperatures: ‘Literal hell’
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Coachella kicked off with chaos on Thursday as thousands who journeyed to Indio, Calif., to take in the annual music festival were trapped in traffic for up to 12 hours as they struggled to enter the fairgrounds only to face near-record high temperatures on Friday.
The conditions were described by many attendees as being among the worst since the festival began in 1999, with some comparing this year’s Coachella to the infamously botched Fyre Festival and others demanding refunds before the first sets had even been played.
“This is the worst organization I have ever seen at a festival and this is Coachella for god sakes [sic],” one person posted on Reddit.
“I made a joke earlier that I didn’t know Fyre Festival tickets were included in admission this year, but that’s honestly how I feel,” a Coachella ticket holder told Business Insider while waiting in his car on Thursday. “I feel duped.”
“People are peeing in cups,” added the man, who said he arrived around 4:30 a.m. local time.
“It’s been eight hours; people gotta do what they gotta do.”
Held at Indio’s Empire Polo Club, the two-weekend Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this year features headliners Lady Gaga, Green Day and Post Malone, and other big-name artists such as Travis Scott, Missy Elliot, Meghan Thee Stallion and a wide assortment of up-and-coming artists.
The forecast high in Indio on Friday was about 102 degrees Friday, according to the LA Times, only a few degrees shy of 106 degrees, the Indio record set in 1904. Festival-goers will get a slight break on Saturday, as the high temperature is expected to drop to 98 degrees.
Another attendee, who waited from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. before being let into the campgrounds, said the experience was “literal hell.”
“It was truly the worst experience ever and also super disappointing because of how much money we spent to be at an event that we really loved,” the four-time Coachella veteran told BI.
“We finally got in, but no one has energy to start setting up camp.”
Countless other complaints flooded social media.
One person trapped in line deployed the lack of bathroom facilities in a video posted on TikTok, calling the experience “disappointing” and “extremely dehumanizing.”
“It’s 100°F outside, people’s cars are overheating, they’re running out of gas. There are no bathrooms anywhere for us to use,” she said.
“There’s staff porta potties people are being denied access to. People have been waiting in their car for 10+ hours. People have literally been using the bathroom behind bushes like animals, and they paid over 600 dollars to be here.”
Another TikTok creator at the festival claimed the event is understaffed this year. “We had no one directing us once we got close to the campgrounds,” she wrote. “I even saw a staff member get taken to the medic tent for dehydration. A couple of workers I spoke to were so disoriented and out of it, I was genuinely concerned.”
Coachella organizers did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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