Here is the first of two individual EDC Las Vegas 2011 festival reviews. This is Kobra's experience:
This year was the first time for Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. Nobody knew how the event would be in its new location and it didn't help that the lineup was not announced until the last minute. We certainly were curious to see if Insomniac would be able to pull it off. Only the weekeend before the Electric Daisy Carnival in Dallas had to shut down early because of over crowding (and one unfortunate death).
The hotels were booked up early for EDC Weekend but, with only a week to spare, we managed to get a room at the Luxor on the Las Vegas strip. It was about 20 miles from the Las Vegas Motor Speedway which was the venue for the event. We bought shuttle passes for the entire weekend as no one in our company wanted to be designated driver. In the end, we managed to get rides with other friends to and from the event, so we never ended up taking the shuttle.
Traffic to the speedway was not too bad. We heard others had some issues getting there but it did not take us more than 30 minutes from leaving our hotel to parking at the speedway. Parking was a easy, free, and about a 10 minute walk to the front gate (thanks to Ernie "The Badger" Bumps for remembering where we parked). People who did take the shuttle reported having to wait up to 2 hours on Friday while Saturday the wait was less than 30 minutes.
The line to get in was about 50 yards long on Friday and Saturday. VIP lines and general admission lines were about the same length. I think we waited less than 30 minutes on both days. Will Call lines were also short but we had our tickets from before. Overall it was definitely one of the easiest line situations I have ever experienced at a festival.
Inside the speedway is huge. Pretty much every stage looked like a main stage. There was a total of 5 larger stages and few smaller ones. None of the stages were really loud unless you were located straight in front of it. There were a lot of people overall but it never got too crowded. It was easy to walk around everywhere without having to bounce into people. And you really got the carnival feel with people dressed up, performers walking around, fireworks going off, and a lot of carnival rides.
On Friday we had our minds set on checking out Cosmic Meadow for Plastikman, Subfocus, and Steve Bug. We also wanted to check out Scream & Benga on the Bass Pod and Tiesto and Steve Angello on the main stage. Being that they all pretty much played at the same time we caught a little of everything. Plastikman had some amazing production and it was great to finally see a bit of what everyone has been talking about from Mutek and Movement earlier this year. The main stage must be the biggest festival stage I have ever seen. Lighting was incredible and Tiesto played some of his old classics. Scream & Benga really had the Bass Pod pumping as did Subfocus at the Cosmic Meadow. After Subfocus was done, so were we after spending hours running back and forward between all the stages and the media center.
Saturday it was all about Circuit Grounds. Woke up late so we unfortunately missed Green Velvet's set. Umek played a pretty dark techno set while Gaiser played a bit housier. We got to do an interview with Richie Hawtin before his set which you can read here. Richie's set was definitely the highlight of the entire festival for us. The Circuit Ground stage area was a bit weird as there were rocks everywhere making it hard to walk, nevermind dance. The production was pretty cool with dancers and fireworks but it did seem a bit random. After the set we walked around a bit checking out the rides before calling it a night.
All in all, Insomniac did an amazing job organizing the festival in its new home. We encountered very few issues that are normally experienced at big festivals. We did not have to wait in any long lines, didn't see any fights, didn't experience too much crowding, and the crowd seemed a bit older than the LA raves.
What made this experience special was Las Vegas as host city. There were pool parties everywhere and, in true Vegas style, there never seemed to be an appropriate time to sleep. Definitely one of the best Vegas trips ever! FestivalZOO will be back next year!
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