Castlepalooza '08

n.catenthusiast wrote: »

how extortionate were the prices? Extremely extortionate, or plain-old reasonably extortionate???

3 quid a can if I recall. Their "off license" only had ****ty beer as well as far as I remember.

Im annoyed with the way this has gone. We'll be arriving with drink for the campsite but concealed well enough that whoever has the unenviable job of upholding this idiotic policy wont be seen to not be doing their job.

I think its a fair comprimise if this is being put on top of the organisers from on high that if the patrons make the effort to not put them in a position where it looks like they are not making an effort to stop drink coming in that they would actually keep the searches brief enough that some drink coming in could be overlooked.

If for any reason they are going to go all out and search everything Ill definetly be making a serious stink about the alcohol ban aspect of the festival next year and not believing any of the various rumours which mysteriously appeared on this board again.

I have a request... can you carry in my big bag of "broadcasting equipment". Its very fragile and cant be opened in a non clean environment. Im sure you could be compensated with some nice 12yr old "broadcasting equipment".

Thats certainly better than last years beer selection of Heineken and Coors. I guess they didnt tell you what prices the off license will be selling these things in bulk?

Im happy with how it turned out for us but I reckon there might be some people less so. Finished up around 3am both nights.

Good Stuff:
Much more people this year but still a good friendly atmosphere in the campsite. Weather was mostly excellent with only a little rain which never made the place muddy. Tiger on tap / Chilled (ish) Kopparberg cans for sale all good. Food stalls were generally ok too and good value (except the pies.)
Some fun performances from bands too though the DJ sets as headliners wasnt such a great idea in my mind.

Bad Stuff:
We pretty much walked in with the most minimal of searches so the no drink in the campsite rule seemed barely enforced so why have it? Made no difference to our group as we prepared accordingly but others I was talking to got badly stung by not knowing about it in advance and arriving with slabs. I feel this will continue to hurt the festival more than anything else.

Major issue was the toilet facilities pretty much shutting down from Sunday evening on. The whole flushing toilet thing is a nice idea but in reality a bunch of portaloos would have been better suited. Water pressure failing so they couldnt be flushed and them getting blocked all the time was alot more unpleasant than portaloos.

I also hated the addition of the Sony singstar tent. A noisy air compressor ran 24hrs right beside the campsite and horrendous karoake came out of it all the time. Way too big for a festival that size. Headwrecking.

Running out of all the good beer. I knew this was going to happen the second I saw the queue of bar staff behind the two tiger taps and the Bud taps sitting untouched on the Saturday. Its great that youve a half decent beer there but stock enough that it doesnt run out in less than a day! I didnt buy a pint on the Sunday as it was all Budweiser. Figure they are only hurting themselves here.

Anyway all in all it was good fun again but theres still some room for improvement as it gets bigger.