V Festival Review

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V Festival
★★★☆☆
2.9
From 20 reviews
65.0% of users recommend this

  • Camping Facilities

  • Food / Drink

  • Amenities

  • Atmosphere

  • Quality Of Acts

  • Value For Money

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Clair's review of V Festival

“Well, that time of year flew around again, it didn't...”

★★★☆☆

written by Clair on 21/08/2006

Well, that time of year flew around again, it didn't seem like yesterday coming back from V Festival, when I was so eager to learn that the pre released tickets were instantly on sale. After such a great line up last year I could hardly type my credit card details in fast enough in a quest for more of the same this year.



So now the morning after the weekend before and how do I feel - Disappointed and amazed at how they could get it so right last year and yet so wrong this time.



The line up to say the least was poor with the exception of the Puppet show put on by Beck which was excellent and Radiohead (in which we left half way through, in a bid to get out of the car park before 4am) and there were a few other good bands like Art Brut, who for me stole the show. But saying that there isn't a lot you can say when a festival, which genetically originates from rock has a line up of bands ( I use that term loosely) of Sugababes, Girls Aloud and even Sandi Thom headlining one of the stages.



As for the amenities these had taken a serious downturn from last year. One possible reason is that the capacity was increased to allow for the Glastonbury fall out. It was defiantly the worst toilets I had ever seen and the layout was not as compact as last year. The increase of tickets also proved a problem with camping spaces, as a few were turned away due to overcrowding even though they carried full and valid camping tickets.



One of my main gripes about this year was the mess, this comment is usually reserved for Leeds Festival but there is a good chance V could take the title for the dirtiest festival of the year.



On one final note, V you could learn a lot from T in the park, as this was clean, well organised and had a great line up, basically every thing you weren't this year.



All in all if you are into the music then go but never, never make the mistake of buying tickets before seeing the line up.

  • Value For Money

  • Radiohead, Morrissey

    Headline Bands

  • Camping Facilities

  • Food / Drink

  • Amenities

  • Atmosphere

  • Quality Of Acts

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Mindy's Response to 182801_Clair's Review

Written on: 24/08/2006

Spot on really. While I liked the lineup a bit more than you - Morrissey is always lovely, Rufus Wainwright was perfect, Bloc Party, Art Brut (Top of the Pops!), Radiohead....there were so many organizational issues with this year's festival that it really put me off. The site was foul, there were not enough toilets - you should never have to queue for 30-40 minutes, I've never had that happen, not at Glasto, not at Leeds, not anywhere. Queuing for an hour for bar tokens only to have to queue for another half hour for a beer is outrageous, the whole point of having the tokens is to make queuing for beer go quickly. They ran out of red wine by 8pm on Saturday, never had any Strongbow, so people waiting on Strongbow to arrive were slowing things down because staff couldn't serve people who wanted anything other than cider while they were standing around waiting on cider. The campsites were a joke - full up and the stewards wouldn't help you find a spot, even though it's their job! The toilets had 200+ person queues and didn't get cleaned out until after mid-day on Sunday meaning that only about 2% of them were usable on Sunday morning. Vile.
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<br/>Next, it&#039;s ridiculous that you should be expected to park your car, walk a mile or more with all your camping gear to the wristband exchange, and then walk back halfway to your car to a campsite and then walk around the campsite looking for a gap big enough for your tent. Why not do it like at Leeds or Summer Sundae where you can get into a campsite with a camping ticket, set up your gear and then go for a wristband? Or, maybe, set up the wristband exchange closer to the car parks? Why not organize the campsites better so only one is opened at a time and filled up, people are directed at where to camp and that way there&#039;s enough room for everyone who has paid for a camping ticket?
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<br/>Finally, the prices were outrageous. £10 for a programme, if you wanted to know the schedule as it was unavailable online still on Saturday morning when we set off. Why couldn&#039;t we have paid £5 for just the laminate? I didn&#039;t need a carrier bag and a magazine, I just wanted the timetable. Why not post the timetables up somewhere so people could see them? It was £5.50 for a jacket potato and I&#039;ve been told some food stalls were charging up to £7 for a burger and chips - this is burger vans too, not restaurant quality food. This after you&#039;ve paid up to £120 for a ticket plus £7 for parking (which is included in the ticket price at other festivals).
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<br/>We had a great time at V but only because the people were really friendly and everyone was making the best of a bad situation. There was nothing that the organisers did to make the festival good (barring booking Moz and Rufus), in fact it seemed they were doing everything they could to maintain their reputation for being money-grabbing, soulless corporate grunts trying to suck the life out of music and fun.

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