FIB Benicàssim Festival 2018

Fitz*

2018 Headliner is announced and early bird tickets on sale (until today). The Killers are a good act I think and there are some rumours of Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys & Catfish & the Bottlemen playing this year also.


Anyone else purchase tickets or hopeful of going?
Any stories from previous years, or expectations for this year?

oxygen

Yea, I'd say Arctic Monkey are nearly a definite tbh, they've just announced a few other Spanish dates and have an album coming out.

Me and 3 friends are going over for the first time this year, havent booked yet, but probably will stay in a hotel a bit away from the festival.

Fitz*

We have accommodation booked, but it's in Oropesa - there's a shuttle service from the town to the festival. There was 10 of us going, now 14 so a Villa was the best bet but they are all too far away from the Benicassim town and taxis will be a nightmare.

Just a heads up on accommodation, nearly all places have the same room layout - double bed, 2 x single beds, and a sofa bed to fit 2 people. And nearly all cost the same amount no matter if its 6 people sharing or 2.

BurtMacklin

Would ye not camp at the festival itself or are ye booking accommodation for comfort etc?

oxygen

FitzShane wrote: »

We have accommodation booked, but it's in Oropesa - there's a shuttle service from the town to the festival. There was 10 of us going, now 14 so a Villa was the best bet but they are all too far away from the Benicassim town and taxis will be a nightmare.

Just a heads up on accommodation, nearly all places have the same room layout - double bed, 2 x single beds, and a sofa bed to fit 2 people. And nearly all cost the same amount no matter if its 6 people sharing or 2.

thanks for the heads up man. Yea, there's 4 of us, so looking to book 2 hotel rooms in Oropesa as well.

Have you heard much about the shuttle service? is it reliable, are there crazy long queues for it, etc?

Fitz*

oxygen wrote: »

thanks for the heads up man. Yea, there's 4 of us, so looking to book 2 hotel rooms in Oropesa as well.

Have you heard much about the shuttle service? is it reliable, are there crazy long queues for it, etc?

I'd say the one room should be enough for 4?

The shuttles are meant to be decent enough, once they get into the swing of things. Obviously if you have 10,000 people all leaving a venue at the same time you are going to have problems, but it's a guaranteed way of getting home and apparently taxi waits are pretty long.

It's my first year going.

oxygen

BurtMacklin wrote: »

Would ye not camp at the festival itself or are ye booking accommodation for comfort etc?

Yea, totally for comfort. I want a decent shower and breakfast daily, and at least 5 hours of air conditioned sleep. TBH I've heard nightmare stories about the campsite over there though, its about 30 degree heat in the morning when your trying to get to sleep, people can't sleep for 4 days. A friend of mine was there last year, said the people coming out of the campsite at the end looked completely dejected.

FitzShane wrote: »

I'd say the one room should be enough for 4?

The shuttles are meant to be decent enough, once they get into the swing of things. Obviously if you have 10,000 people all leaving a venue at the same time you are going to have problems, but it's a guaranteed way of getting home and apparently taxi waits are pretty long.

It's my first year going.

Yea, my first year too. Its 2 girls and 2 guys, so we need two room's to spare any incidents of :eek:

Fitz*

BurtMacklin

A few of us might be selling our early bird passes if anyone is interested? Apologies Mods if this isn't allowed.

JamieHP

BurtMacklin wrote: »

A few of us might be selling our early bird passes if anyone is interested? Apologies Mods if this isn't allowed.

How many?

BurtMacklin

JamieHP wrote: »

How many?

I'll check with the lads. About 6 of us have tickets. A few are trying to jump ship to another festival now so some tickets might be up for grabs. I'll find out and come back to you.

corcaigh07

Has anybody done the glamping option for FIB?

270 each gets you a tent, bedding and ticket.

ryaner777

Always stayed in castellon. For that price I'd get a nice hotel there for the few days and get the bus pass for €50.

Much more comfortable and a beautiful town to see during the day

Fitz*

corcaigh07

Anyone going from Madrid to this? Trains don’t seem to be available to book yet.

Fitz*

So, what did everyone think? Bands seen etc

I 1000% would recommend this festival, even if the town is hard to get to.

As a festival overall, it is amazing. Never seen such a well run festival in all my days, between shuttle bus, queues, ease of access to all stages, toilets, food etc.

• Drinks so easy to get, once tokens are purchased and bar the first night there was never really any queues for this either. spirits were a nice pour too, sometimes.
• Toilets same, never any queues and the toilet roll people were so handy. Even better was the 'pissing wall' for lads. So handy. Also, a very useful feature was the unisex toilets - easy for couples/groups so that they can go together and not get split up
• Food was decent quality to be fair too. Nothing bad anyways that I, or my group ate.
• Never really any trouble, saw one lad pretty banged up but you'll have that eventually in such a massive group.
• Generally laid back chilled type of vibe around the ground, with a nice age group too.
• The Saturday crowd was massive, and you could tell a lot of locals came in that night, and probably the most 'dodgy' crowd of the weekend too, without trying to sound racist.
• Shuttle bus to Marina d'Or was fairly well run too. The earlier you went to the festival site, the sooner you got there. Once a bus was full, off it went. If you left it later in the evening to go, there was more chance you were waiting for a bus to arrive.
• Some really nice chill out areas and can eat / drink in peace and see a band in the background
• OMG the red dust!!! where does it come from?!

I think this is the complete list of people I saw;

JHus
TDCC
Pale Waves
Friend Within
Catfish
Vaccines
Killers (fairly out of it tho haha, remember a good bit but not all)
Eric Prydz
Kooks (missed the first 3/4 songs)
Pet Shop Boys
Chase & Status
Wolf Alice (only half sadly as the gf wanted to meet the rest of our group at Bastille)
Bastille
Liam Gallagher
couple of random DJs in the tent / South Beach over the weekend.

Nice few there, was disappointed to miss Madness as we were delayed coming in from Marina d'Or but generally can be quiet happy. Some great surprises like Pet Shop Boys, who to me, seemed to blow the crowd away. Pale Waves were class in the tent and The Vaccines were act of the weekend for me.

For a supposed 'poor' lineup, I still saw a lot of top quality acts and in general, my group had an excellent time at the festival site.

Sorry to finish on a sour note, but would never recommend anyone stay in Marina d'Or.

• They HATE, and I mean HATE English speaking people during the festival.
• The '6' people rooms fit 4 at best (luckily we had 3 rooms for 11 people but originally booked for 14 people)
• Extremely rude staff who makes things very difficult for check-in, have hidden deposits which must be collected from a different hotel over 3 miles away.
• Secutiy ban all drink, food, snacks from the pool side area and ball games, inflatables, jumping in the pool is banned. Thrown out for doing any of these.
• Reception refusing to call a taxi for us. But no taxis in the area in general too.
• No cleaning service & no clean towels given. (8 big towels for the whole apt for 5 days.)
• Very poor quality amienities around the blocks of apartments that all look the exact same. Some day a place would serve us all food and the next ignore us, or say the kitchen was closed randomly or that they had no plates.
• Ignore the Irish Bar in Marina d'Or like the plague. I feel ashamed to have the word Irish in the title of the place.
• literally the only thing that is good about the place is the beach & shuttle bus location