Over the past couple days, reports coming from Chattahoochee Hills, Atlanta indicate that inclement weather conditions have dramatically limited attendance to the music festival TomorrowWorld. Furthermore, personal testimonies from both employees and attendees of the three-day event suggest that lapses in communication at the management level have resulted in conditions that have ruined the festival experience for thousands and even placed many in harm’s way.
Today, organizers issued the following statement:
Today, Sunday September 27, TomorrowWorld will only be accessible to visitors currently camping at DreamVille. Continuous rainfall over the last three days has severely limited capacity of the parking lots, entrance roads and drop off locations in and around the festival site. The experience of the TomorrowWorld visitors is always TomorrowWorld’s number one priority, so TomorrowWorld was forced to close all daily parking lots and drop off locations.
TomorrowWorld regrets that festivalgoers with day tickets, guest list tickets, and anyone not already camping at DreamVille will unfortunately not be able to access the festival. The last day of the festival will go on for the 40,000 visitors already situated in DreamVille, with David Guetta, Armin Van Buuren, and Martin Garrix all on deck. More information and refund policy will be available soon..
Less than a fourth of the estimated 180,000 in attendance will be able to return for the final day of the festival, as muddy roads and lots have drastically limited entry by vehicle. Last night, many attendees reported having to walk for miles in the dark after shuttles stopped running – some of whom even lay down on the side of the road from exhaustion. On the production side, employees of the event reported having been fired in droves before the third day so that they wouldn’t have to remain on payroll.
Perhaps the most egregious oversight at TomorrowWorld took the form of significant violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Attendees reported witnessing wheelchair-bound festival goers stranded as lots between pathways had been rendered too muddy to cross.
TomorrowWorld’s organizers, ID&T, are a subsidiary of SFX Entertainment. The latter company has hemorrhaged money in the last few months as its stock price has dropped to appalling lows, resulting in the cancellation of One Tribe Festival in SoCal as well as lawsuits directed towards its founder, Robert Sillerman. TomorrowWorld had been the conglomerate’s crowning achievement in what Billboard dubbed “The EDM Arms Race” in 2012, but the events of this weekend make the future of the massive questionable.
We’ll continue to keep you posted as we hear more on the situation at TomorrowWorld, but for now, if you were in attendance, let us know how your experience was in the comments section below.