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ZOO8 Organisers Declare Festival A "Qualified Success"
In a statement that's likely to raise the hackles of many of those who attended, the organisers of ZOO8 have declared the festival a "qualified success". The statement comes after many fans complained of incompetence and disorganisation.
"Our biggest problem was one of miscalculation over cash-flow” admitted Danny Blanche, Zoothousand Festival Co-Director. “This required us to make pragmatic decision to cancel a few acts. Thankfully, with some vital assistance from Port Lympne Wildlife Park, we managed to keep the show on the road, with the vast majority of the popular acts appearing.
“We also had to temporarily shut the Big Top tent on Saturday entirely because of Health & Safety due to problems with one of the poles supporting the structure. The obvious knock-on effect of this was that we had to move the acts into other performance spaces, which did cause some confusion, but there was no choice – safety always has to come first.”
Blanche continued: “We have had feedback that people were unhappy with the length of time they were waiting to get into the event, and the toilets on the campsite. People turned up much earlier than predicted on Friday causing delays, and the campsites became busier than expected which caused some infrastructure problems. These are all areas that we dealt with as best we could as they arose.
“Obviously, none of this was ideal or planned – and not the quality of experience that we had aimed to deliver – and for that we unreservedly apologise to all those affected by the situation. We want to stress that this was our first festival and that we have dealt with all problems directly and will continue to do so in preparation for next year."
So confident are the festival organisers of rectifying the problems that marred the event, they're already thinking of holding the eventnext year. Said Matt Dice, the festival's Co-Director: “Three other festivals went under this very weekend- we’re operating in seriously tough market conditions but we’ll rectify everything from this year and definitely be back for Z009”.
Were you there? Would do you think? A fair assessment of what happened or an experience different from yours? Leave your comments below.
Tagged as The Cribs, Dizzee Rascal
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comments
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I have never been so disappointed after a festeval! Five hours to get in friday, no bands or events ran ontime
some of my favourate artists didnt show up ???? filthy dirty toilets , bad attitude security staff , limited food and drink stalls in the mornings. total waste of £230 for 2 weekend tickets...camping was a joke as there wasnt space allocated anywhere??? young children put in danger as groups of lads began fighting>>>security were rubbish... -
friday we planned to go around 5ish to try n beat the crowds.. we waited 5 hours to get into the line for wrist bands.. n then waited 2 hours to get them, they ran out of camping wrist bands so my friend didnt have one for the whole festiavl soo we had to sneak her in which was BAD!!!
then acts were cancelled.. i have rang the zoo soo many times.. and they will not being doing a weekend again!! and another thing ITS 4 DAYS AFTER THE EVENT AND THEY HAVE NOT CLEANED UP THE CAMPSITE THERES RUBBISH EVERYWHERE!!!!!!
i have a gd time but soo many things were wronge!!! I WANT MY MONEY BACK N SO DOES ALL MY MATES!!!!!!! -
how dare you !you had people queue in the sweltering heat from 10am and did not have the facilities to deal with this .why not let people in from that time onwards and you would not have had the huge volume to deal with later.after a 150 mile drive with my son as his end of GCSE treat we stood cramped with over 5,000 people from 11.30 am till 3.pm and then had another hour and a half wait to get tickets processed.a sham
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The Companies House website shows the Limited Company behind the event, Wild Life Music Events Ltd, as never having filed any accounts/returns since they were incorporated in February 2007. Which they are legally obliged to do.
Oh and here's some info on one of the organisers, who ran an online pharmaceuticals scam selling knock-off flu drugs (see points 4B & 6B): http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006-0170.html
Does the word "cowboys" occur to anyone else? -
I was at the festival, and to be honest the best place to be was with the Headset Disco people. The y had amazing DJs from Beatfeast collective and even DJs from the dance tent played there when their tent was closed by h/s. They were great guys and I hope they read this. The rest was, to say the least, sketchy, but I want to meet them again and dance with them. The music was great and the lights were fab. Thanks guys and I hope you get paid!!!!! You guys deserve it!!!!! xx
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Did not deliver what was advertised (in terms of bands). As well as the incompetence in many other areas as mentioned in article. But my main concern is that they admit no blame to themselves and i think it would have beeen only fair to give part re-fund afterwards, As pretty much everyone i know who attended felt they were quite simply robbed
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If security was such an issue then why was there only one security staff on the gates to teh VIP camping site which meant that whenever she needed a break the site was unmanned? Seriously, I am extremly disappointed and feel they should either give full or part refunds to those that attended, this should be covered in their insurance policies - if they have one!
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ZOO8 - what a joke!!!
I was in a queue for nearly 3 hours to get my wristbands, then searching for a place to put my tent, and then most of the acts didnt go on either because the arena opened late, the tap 'n' tin tent was closed or there was not enough money to pay them!!! -
Ha Ha Ha :) would love to be informed as to what exactly this "direct action" was that they took to rectify these problems!!
Good luck to em with next year... they can "organise" it as much as they want but they can be fucked if i'm goin... i'm sure that stands for the vast majority of the rest of the punters too! -
Well where do I start?!
considering that Glastonbury started in the 60's you would have thought that some lessons could have been learned. If the camp sight had been opened the night before (like many other Festivals) there may not have been such a rush to get everyone in the morning the Festival started. The cue to get in put people in a bad mood and created a heated atmosphere. This is where your first fights stemmed from.
As for the amount of bands that did not turn up or play this was completley disapointing. ALL bands that i purposly went to see were not there. To add insult to injury no one bothered to tell us what was going on!! Some of the acts got moved to the VIP tent as a result of the Big Top tent being closed due to health and saftey. This is all well and good for the VIPers???!!! What about us normos?! This whole Festival was a waste of my weekend and money, they needed to make this first Z008 a wkd to remember to get the punters back but unfortunalty it ended before its begain.
Poo8!!!!
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