https://www.dw.com/en/wacken-open-air-2023-deluged-by-rain/a-66366139
The 32nd edition of the legendary heavy metal music festival is set to kick off this week, but heavy rains are posing challenges.
as is tradition
No new people are allowed on festival grounds now due to ground conditions. So any arrival method, not just by car, has been cancelled.
I wonder if those prohibited from entering will get their money back?
I hope so, but this is definitely an interesting case, where the event is not cancelled but people are not allowed to enter due to environmental conditions. Maybe this is covered in the refund conditions, but even if not, maybe they decide to still refund the tickets
Yeah. They will have all the expected running costs of a big event but suddenly with a lot less people. If they refund tickets despite still having a majority of the costs I hope they are insured.
They said they will refund the tickets. They are just working about how. This is tearing me apart to a degree though.
Like, for one, this was entirely unprecedent amounts of rain. Pretty much twice the amount of rain of the worst 4 times of rain the festival received over 31 years.
On one hand, this is at least a tiny drop of salvation on the fans that cannot get into the holy grounds. You at least get these 300 euro tickets back. Though, people have spent 8 - 10 hours arriving in cars per direction, spend hundreds more in festival prep, slept in cars because of nonsense. For nothing, in many cases.
And they are losing out on what's going to be the biggest vacation they have that year. Money doesn't fix that.
And on the other hand, festivals are dying at the moment. Corona has killed so many cool festivals, because long-term rent contracts were not met by ticket revenue and on-site revenue. And now, 35000 out of 85000 festival guests of Wacken cannot come and have to be refunded at 300 euros / ticket. That's a casual million euros gone. And on-site revenue from those guests is gone as well, thirty percent easily. That's really hard.
The timing here really, really sucks, just being after the corona years. For everyone.
Been rainy and lame as fuck here in the Netherlands too. Definitely one of the most mid summers I've experienced in a while thus far.