Tens of thousands of people were in Miami for a massive music festival this weekend but things didn’t go according to plan when it came to ferrying people off the island venue where it was being held.
170,000 people were expected at the annual Ultra Music Festival but when day one of the three-day festival was all over on Friday night, thousands appeared to have been left stranded and were forced to walk four miles along a highway to get back to the downtown area on the mainland.
Things were so bad at one point that several people declared the weekend-long gig to be a ‘Fyre Festival 2’. A reference to the failed luxury music festival that was supposed to take place in the Bahamas in 2017 which saw thousands swindled.
Thousands of tired and angry concertgoers who paid $400 a ticket waited for hours to board a bus only to end up walking for miles along a bridge at 2am
Thousands more abandoned the shuttle bus plan and crossed the Rickenbacker Causeway, walking nearly four miles to downtown Miami from Virgina Key and the Ultra Music Festival
In this particular instance, there was nothing wrong with the performers or the gig itself but the transport to and from the venue.
Ultra Festival staff had recommended festival-goers to take the Metrorail and Metromover as the ideal mode for transportation – but when it came to shuttle buses there was nothing but chaos.
A logistical meltdown seemed to occur at the end of the night leading to tens of thousands of concertgoers waiting hours for shuttles off Virginia Key island and had to walk four miles back to downtown Miami along the Rickenbacker Causeway to hail rides.
Frustration quickly reached boiling point among the concert-goers who had each paid around $400 for a ticket to attend the massive electronic music festival, as 50,000 people all tried to leave at once after the final performance of the night at 2am, according to the Miami Herald.
Lines appeared to be endless as the buses could only hold 55 people at a time.
The organizers had apparently laid on more than 200 buses for people to reach the downtown area, but that only took care of around 11,000 attendees – and patience was in short supply.
Plenty of festival-goers refused to wait in line for the buses after a night of drinking
At one stage, a tree set alight after the embers from a firework landed on top of a palm tree
Apart from the sheer chaos in the vast numbers of people all leaving at the same time, people also refused to line up properly with festival staff appearing to be clueless as to where the bus pickup points were located.
The three-day music event was being held on Virginia Key, a tiny island directly south of Miami Beach, attached to the shore by a long, two-lane bridge which many decided to walk along to reach their homes, hotels and hostels.
‘This was my first year attending the Ultra,’ a Twitter user named Kailey wrote in an online statement. ‘Getting there was easy as f*** and the festival itself wasn’t bad but leaving there was f***ing TERRIBLE and we won’t be attending the next days.’
A number of festival-goers compared the pandemonium to the infamous Fyre festival of 2017
Twitter users captured the extraordinary scene as concert-goers were forced to walk miles in order to leave the venue because of a shortage of buses
‘As disorder mounted, people began to try and make their way back by foot, but many were halted by police, and forced to wait for the shuttle. ‘So we get in the line to just wait for a shuttle bus,’ Kailey continued in her statement.
‘Almost an hour and a half later people start screaming that there’s no point in waiting for one because it’s going to take up to four hours…They shut down all the shuttles because people were getting angry with the mass confusion. Banging on the buses to just let people in. We probably watched 20 buses pass us with absolutely no one in them. It was straight chaos.’
‘Last night, many of you experienced challenging transportation conditions leaving the festival. This is unacceptable and inconsistent with the high standards you have come to expect from us. For this, we are sorry,’ organizers wrote Saturday afternoon.
‘As you might expect, we have already been working cooperatively with our city and county partners to promptly address and resolve these issues. We look forward to offering you a significantly improved transportation experience today and throughout the weekend, and we appreciate the opportunity to earn back your confidence and trust.’
Organizers later wrote again to say they were ‘hard at work ensuring a smooth transportation experience,’ including by allocating ‘additional resources’ to ‘enhanced training for ALL transportation staff and volunteers.’
‘Changes to the transportation plan are being implemented today,’ Miami Commissioner Ken Russell said in a statement. ‘I’m hopeful that plan will be much improved and the City will not have more of a disruption than experienced yesterday and early this morning.’
Frustration boiled over to anger and eventually thousands of people walked and ran to downtown Miami – a four mile trek along a two-lane bridge
Juan Perez, Miami-Dade’s police director, said the festival had not anticipated so many people would leave before midnight.
‘The patrons piled out at the 11 o’clock hour,’ Perez said. ‘The buses were not ready for that to occur. The patrons did not want to wait for the buses and walked instead. New plan for today.’
Stephanie Bromfield, a media relations coordinator at Ultra, said the rest of the weekend would run more smoothly as officials worked out a better strategy for getting people off the island.
‘Everybody came out at two a.m.,’ she said. ‘I think they’re trying to figure out how do we filter that out.’
She said festival organizers would learn from the mayhem of the first day and make Saturday night a better experience for concert goers shelling out up to $400 for three-day passes.
‘The transportation people, it didn’t seem like they were trained,’ she said. ‘I think they’re trying to figure out that whole thing.’
She added: ‘It was the first night, we’ve never had anything in that location. We knew there were gonna be issues with the buses. Especially with people drinking, who’s gonna wait for a bus?’