12 True Festival Fails From Those Who Lived To Tell The Tale

Festivals aren't all glamor and fun. Whether you're a proud patron of Coachella, Lollapalooza, Fyre Festival (too soon?), or any other music and arts extravaganza, you know that a lot of money, time and effort goes into the #BestTimeofYourLife.

But remove the (literal and figurative) rose-colored glasses, and you'll uncover the real blood, sweat and tears that go into the festival experience. And we all know someone who ends up in tears...

Like the recent LA vs NYC piece (go back and read it if you haven't) I asked people from around the country to share real experiences of the thorns behind the flower crowns.

The identities of these festie-besties will remain anonymous - because we all have jobs, duh - but the tales of triumph and defeat actually took place. Enjoy.

I went with my sister and younger brother to the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas a few years ago. They say that families that rave together, stay together… which played out when I accidentally bit a Camelbak too hard, popped off my front veneer, dropped it in the dust, and forced a group of strangers to take out their cellphones and “find the damn tooth!" Meeting new people was hard after that, especially when they were met with the smiling face of a snaggle-toothed carnivore adorned with glitter and sweat. The next day, I thoroughly cleaned the veneer and stuck it back in my mouth to find a surprisingly seamless fit. It was so seamless in fact that I forgot it was there when I went to brush my teeth… and watched my $1000 veneer fall down the sink at the Wynn. My favorite part of the whole story is opening the hotel door for the handyman and kindly explaining that there was, “Something of mine he needed to retrieve… now."

You half-expect people to be on drugs at festivals, and sometimes you just can't tell. But after meeting my friend's girlfriend and hanging out for a few hours, I realized she'd definitely gone cross-eyed and needed help. “Those are just my eyes," she said. I was mortified.

"They say that families that rave together, stay together… which played out when I accidentally bit a Camelbak too hard, popped off my front veneer." Photo Courtesy of Indigo East

My sister and I share a purse at festivals -- it's just easier to carry things that way. That year, we thought it'd be “smart" to bring our passports as a second form of ID (should we somehow lose our licenses), and carried them inside the purse with both of our car and house keys, all of our credit cards, a thousand dollars in cash, new iPhones, and all the swag we'd picked up at the brand parties. And then -- just as you probably guessed -- we lost the purse. The consequences were dire: it ruined the rest of the festival (it was the last day at least), and we had to have our car towed to the nearest dealership. Since we'd lost all our cards and ID's, we had no form of payment (or proof of identity to get new cards at the bank) so I had to go around the party house Venmo-ing people I'd just met for cash to pay for it and the $250 new car key.

Luckily, one of us still had our phones. We kept calling the iPhone that was left in the purse until, at the dealership, an angel answered it. We ubered to his house 20 minutes away, cried our eyes out, and paid him for being so honest.

The line-up at Outside Lands in 2015 was amazing -- even Elton John performed! Too bad I missed it. Apparently, after just one show, I'd taken the liberty of running away from my friend group, hanging out with complete strangers, took a nap in a field, and suddenly woke up to run away… leaving my phone in the grass. I have a few memories, one of them including yelling the word “bed" to a paramedic. When I came to, I realized I'd checked myself into the Medic Tent claiming it was nap time, and proceeded to sleep through the entire festival. The next day my coworker asked how Elton John was. I had no comment.

"You get invited to a lot of celebrity after parties at Coachella — but they don't always turn out to be as great as you'd expect." Photo Courtesy of blog.zalora.com

You get invited to a lot of celebrity after parties at Coachella -- but they don't always turn out to be as great as you'd expect. After Neon Carnival one year (at like 4 am) we got invited to Drake's mansion. My friends and I were tired and didn't want to risk driving 20 minutes at surge prices to get to a party that might get shut down by the time we arrived. Plus, we were stuck in crazy traffic getting out of the event parking lot. Our Uber driver overheard us and asked for the party address. We told him we'd give it to him if he drove his brand new Mercedes over the concrete median, thus cutting the traffic line. He agreed, we gave him the address, and we went home.

An hour later, we get a text from him laughing, saying how incredible the party was and how bad we fucked up. It was the greatest night of his life… and the worst of mine.

I was sitting on a rock in the middle of the river, only realizing later on that the other people in the river weren't dancing but… you know. In retrospect, that would account for the angry looks they were giving me. But I honestly thought it was some discriminatory thing so with my “warrior mentality" I decided I wasn't moving. It's not every day you're involved in an orgy without realizing. One less thing on the bucket list.

I decided to volunteer one year with an organization in exchange for free tickets to Coachella. Sounds like a fair trade, right? Wrong. Crazy shifts and hard labor under the scorching desert sun weren't exactly “a walk in the Polo fields," and the comfort level of the volunteers was not prioritized. But the worst moment came the day after Coachella ended, when we had to tear down the booths and art installations. After working for hours in the blistering heat, the organizers finally released us… waving goodbye as they drove away in golf carts toward the staff camping/parking area (which was about a 30 min walk away). When we finally crossed the fields, we found the exits fenced and locked, leaving us with literally no way to get out. We tried calling for help, but the area was an empty wasteland of techno dreams. We had to the climb the goddamn fence to escape. Lesson learned: I now buy my Coachella tickets like a normal person.

"I almost died because I burst my appendix the day before Coachella, but a healthy dose of inebriation powered me through the festival." Photo Courtesy of REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

I tried to sneak a full 3L bag of white wine into a festival… inside my pants. I almost got through security, but at the last second I got stopped and asked to lift my shirt up. The massive bag of yellow-ish fluid was poking out of the top of my pants. Thinking on my toes, I told the security guard it was my catheter bag. She gave me a puzzled look, and it became evident she had no idea what a catheter was... so she shouts across the crowded security line to her manager, "Can you come take a look at this gentleman's catheter?!" Hilarity ensued.

I almost died because I burst my appendix the day before Coachella, but a healthy dose of inebriation powered me through the festival. I didn't know it was appendicitis until much later afterward.

I'd arrived late at night and took a quick walk on the dusty playa, taking note of several of the art installations. A small kinetic piece caught my attention, but it was too dark to see. I walked right up to it for a better look, squinted my eyes to try and force them to adjust, and finally gave up. When I turned on my headlamp, the bright LED revealed the installation to be a human couple. “Welcome to burning man," they said.

I woke up on day two of the festival to realize that my wallet was missing. Remembering exactly where I must've left it (near a stage while making a potentially shady business deal with an unknown wook...) I rushed back to find it gone. Some festival security took me to lost and found, but it hadn't been turned in. Completely defeated (and no longer in any state to search for a small brown wallet at a muddy festival) I spent most of the day anxiously dreading the logistics of getting home without my ID or any money. At sunset, I randomly asked another security guard, who got on his radio and said, “I'll send this happy camper your way." I have never been so ecstatic in my life. Turns out the lost and found was in a completely different spot than what the first security guard told me. It had been there all day and I would've had such a great day if that asshat sent me to the correct tent in the first place. But the polarization of my emotions made the rest of the night more incredible than it could've ever been otherwise.

I met a group of friends (many of whom were firefighters) and made one of them my festie-bestie. We were so attached at the hip that his friends thought it would be funny to attach us at the wrist… AKA handcuff us together. I spent the next 8 hours walking around the Nevada desert getting to know that human very well. At one point, I figured out I could contort my hand out of the handcuff, but kept it on because I was actually having fun. Though the desert heat made the metal burn.