Tomorrowland: how the best electronic music festival in Europe is organized

Tomorrowland is one of the biggest electronic music festivals in Europe and the world. During the weekend, about 180,000 people gather in the Belgian town of Boom for a weekend of performances by all the best DJs of our time. People come from all over the world to listen to them: from Japan and Australia to Brazil and Argentina. And the organizing team annually prepares an incredible show, builds a beautiful stage and does everything to make the visitors' rest as comfortable as possible.

Now the festival is held two weekends in a row - Weekend 1 and Weekend 2 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). The program differs quite a bit. I attended Weekend 1 and will tell you how to get to Tomorrowland and how much it costs.

Before you start reading the article

It's worth planning a trip if you know who Tiesto, Martin Garrix and Armin van Buuren are and you like their music. If you like Gorillaz or Beyonce, for example, it's better to choose another festival.

Buying tickets

You need to buy tickets six months before the festival. Everything happens in several stages. In December you register on tomorrowland.com to get the right to buy a ticket. The sale happens in January (prices are more affordable during pre-sale) and February (prices go up). Then you can get in an electronic queue and, if someone turns in their tickets or doesn't redeem them, the festival will offer to buy them.

You should not procrastinate with the registration - it is better to do everything at a clearly marked time. Early registration gives you the opportunity to get into the "TOP-20 from the country": it means that you managed to register in the first twenty people from, for example, Ukraine. This gives you the right to buy tickets on a priority basis - a few days before the general sale starts.

The demand for tickets is huge. According to some reports, there were between 1 and 6 million people who wanted to buy tickets for Tomorrowland in 2018. While there are only 180,000 tickets for each of the weekends. Based on this, it is clear that the right of priority purchase is a very valuable option.

The friend with whom we were traveling together made it to the top 20 from Ukraine, but I did not, although my registration was only a minute later than his. You can buy up to four tickets per account, so he bought tickets for the two of us. However, even with priority purchase, we didn't manage to buy the type of tickets we had originally chosen: within 6 minutes after the start of sales, while the site allowed us to get to the purchase cabinet, the best options were already sold out.

If you didn't manage to buy a ticket, you can buy it from resellers - yes, there are resellers in Europe. There are specialized sites for this purpose, and they may ask for a price twice as high as the original one. However, it can also happen that you pay the money and they send you a fake ticket - there are scammers everywhere.

Another option to successfully get to the festival is to buy a so-called Global Journey. This is a type of trip where you pay money and the Tomorrowland team buys you tickets, pays for transfers, takes care of your accommodation, etc. Usually, such a trip costs much more than independent planning, and the trip itself is inaccessible from Ukraine, so I did not consider this option. But because of the price, the demand is less, so there are more chances to get to the festival.

We had no problems with paying for tickets, but we read the reviews of people from previous years and some wrote that their cards were not accepted by the payment system. To save ourselves from problems, we prepared the required amount on two cards from different banks and set all the limits.

Types of tickets

In fact, there are two types of tickets: standard and with increased comfort - we will call it VIP. The second option gives access to closed areas where there are fewer people, fewer queues at the bar and more comfortable to dance. Prices in 2018 start at €225 for a standard ticket and €380 for VIP. You can also buy a single day ticket from €94. We had regular ones, we simply didn't have time to buy better tickets. But, in the end, there was no discomfort from it. When you buy a ticket, you will be charged a commission of a few euros.

The ticket itself does not give the right to enter the festival - you need a special bracelet with a chip, on which all the necessary information is recorded. The same wristband is used for contactless payment - no cash or cards are accepted anywhere at the festival, all payment is by wristband only. It is delivered to your address, the cost of delivery is another €25 or so for the box it comes in. We had two boxes, in the end all commissions and additional costs amounted to an extra €100.

Take into account the fact that the euro exchange rate in Ukraine often fluctuates. At the time of purchase it was about 35 UAH/euro. In summer - 31 UAH/euro. We overpaid several thousand hryvnias on the spot, so if you have the opportunity to set aside money in advance you can save quite well.

Where to live

There are several options to choose from: a place called DreamVille, in the neighborhood or in neighboring cities.

DreamVille is a huge town of 30,000 people right next to the Tomorrowland festival, built by the festival team: it's basically an artificial city built for the festival. You can live in different tents, cabins, etc. DreamVille residents are provided with all amenities in the form of showers, toilets, stores, salons and eating places.

Surroundings: There are small towns near Tomorrowland where you can rent a house, apartment or room. They say that usually everything is rented very far in advance and it's almost impossible to book something there. We did not consider this option, but according to one of the residents we managed to talk to, rooms are rented for an average of 100 €/day.

Neighboring cities: this is the choice of many. People live in Antwerp, Brussels, etc. Prices vary, but add to that travel time - you have to go back and forth every day, and the festival ends at 1am. We found this to be uncomfortable for us.

You can book the hotel with a discount of up to -65% on the website.

Our choice was DreamVille. There are several accommodation options there, you can check them out here. We took the Easy Tent 2P Package: they set up your tent, give you an air mattress and 2 sleeping bags (there is a four-person option). You don't have to do anything yourself, you arrive and everything is already set up. The only downside is that there is no outlet to charge your equipment. They are available in the Spectacular Easy Tent, but they were bought out before we could do it. The tent is yours - you can pick it up after the festival.

Each type of tent is in a separate area, it's gated, entrance is by wristband. There are showers and toilets, everything in abundance, queues are small but there are queues in the morning. A lock is provided to close the tent, the territory is constantly patrolled by security, but valuable things are advised to hide in the Locker - a storage room. We did so - we paid €25 for the whole time: we put our passports and cash there.

For a tent with two standard tickets (a set called Easy Tent 2P Package) we paid €960 + about €100 commissions, as I wrote above. This is one of the most affordable off-the-shelf options. The cost of the most expensive option reaches €2400 for two people: the so-called cabin has two full beds, chairs, sockets, etc.

DreamVille was a convenient option for us. First of all, we could arrive and check in on Thursday, while the festival itself starts on Friday. We spent this extra day exploring the area. Secondly, we didn't want to waste time traveling: DreamVille is right next to the festival, a 10-15 minute walk. Third, there is an extra party on Thursday - the Gathering. This is a special DJ performance exclusively for DreamVille residents.

DreamVille will be uncomfortable for you if you are used to staying only in hotels or maybe you are squeamish about using public restroom/shower facilities. Even in the best conditions, you will actually be living outdoors. It can be noisy, the company around you may be resting while you sleep. It may rain at night, your tent may flood, the mattress may be uncomfortable, it may be cold/ hot or something else. If you're not prepared for that, DreamVille is not the right place for you.

Here I would like to note that all toilets are constantly cleaned, they are clean and comfortable to use. Moreover, there is a full-fledged toilet, it is not what we used to call our "bio-toilets".

A few important details for DreamVille residents:

• It can be cold in the tent at night, even with a sleeping bag. Take warm clothes, we slept in sweaters and socks. The worst thing to do is to get cold and sick.
• There are paid showers: there is always hot water and more comfortable. The cost is €1,5.
• On the territory you can not bring anything in glass containers: do not buy, so that then at the entrance to take away. But! Check backpacks are not always checked, so from glass you can pour into a regular plastic bottle and then no one will say anything.
• Food can be bought in the supermarket in the neighborhood of the town - it is easy to find on Google maps. Everything except glass can be brought in - no one will say anything. We did this with water, alcohol and snacks - they cost a lot more in DreamVille.
• There is also a mini-supermarket on the territory of DreamVille, where it is favorable to buy salads and fruits, but there is no alcohol and very expensive water. That's what we did: we bought ourselves salads and other food to eat in the morning and afternoon, and in the evening we ate on the territory of the festival. It helped to diversify the diet.
• We used external batteries to charge our gadgets, having taken a few of them from home. However, they were not enough. The best thing to do is not to bother, but to rent them right at Tomorrowland: you leave a deposit and they give you a battery. If you run out of battery, you can go and get a new one with a full charge for free.

There are food and drink outlets in DreamVille, all of which are identical to what I will describe for Tomorrowland in the next section. The only difference is that at DreamVille you can bring food from the supermarket, but at Tomorrowland you can't: you will be thoroughly searched and anything extra will be taken away.

What to eat and drink at Tomorrowland

Note: all purchases in DreamVille and Tomorrowland are made with perles, the local currency. The exchange rate is approximately 1 perl to €1.6. For convenience, I will write prices in euros.

The food selection is quite large, but it's predominantly fast food. I didn't really look closely, but the variety of burgers significantly exceeds the number of salad outlets (there are almost none). Personally, I advise you not to rush into buying food, walk through the different outlets and see what is given where. So, for example, on the first day I bought a tasteless burger, and then for the same money I found a big piece of chicken with potatoes.

Almost all food costs from €7-10 and up. There are always queues for food. However, they move quickly, everything is done in such a way that people don't wait longer than 5-10 minutes.

You can also eat in restaurants. There are few of them, and the prices are higher. We went to the restaurant B-Eat by Las Vegas - it's kind of a phylum of a restaurant from Las Vegas. Entrance is €35, they feed you, drink you, and all to a DJ performance.

All takes about an hour, we were satisfied.

Drinks are standard - water, sodas, beer, simple cocktails, wine. There are separate cocktail bars, there can make not just "whiskey-cola", and something more complicated. Water 0,5 liters costs about €3, soda 0,33 liters - €3, beer 0,5 liters - €6, "whiskey-cola" - €10, wine - €6. Personal experience shows that it is best to buy wine and beer.

You can buy water once and then fill the bottle at special points, but there are always huge queues. You will be sold a bottle of water without a cap, but you can take the cap with you to the festival territory, having bought the same bottle (SPA brand) outside the festival.

Shoes / clothing

I got my sneakers ripped on the first day. Nothing strange - there were tens of thousands of people dancing around. The problem was solved with superglue from the supermarket, thanks to which they lived for the next three days. The story is that you should not take the newest and most beautiful shoes: they will be trampled on, it may rain, they may tear. It is better to take old sneakers or sneakers, which are not sorry, but in which it is comfortable to spend 10-12 hours every day. For going to the shower, flip-flops are suitable.

We took a t-shirt for every day, shorts and warm clothes in case of bad weather. As a result, the warm clothes were used at night for sleeping, and during the day we had a T-shirt and shorts. Goggles are needed for the sun, if you have any - take a cap, it will be more comfortable. It is also recommended to use sunscreen, you can get burned, almost all the stages are open. During the day at the festival include water cannons, they disperse moisture near the stages, it saves from the heat.

We didn't take anything special, but there were people who created whole outfits. For example, 10 people dressed up in costumes of Hogwarts students - Harry Potter and his friends, it looked cool. If you have room in your luggage, why not? We took the flag of Ukraine with us, which helped us to identify other Ukrainians in the crowd.

We also took raincoats in case of rain, personal hygiene products, towels for the shower and pills for coughs, colds and stomach aches. We didn't check the medications on DreamVille territory, but on Tomorrowland you can't officially bring them with you - only if you have a prescription.

Everyone's stuff fit in a backpack. We decided right away that we wouldn't pack much so we wouldn't bother ourselves on the road. What we took was enough.

How to get there

We flew on low-cost airlines from Kiev with a connection in Warsaw. It turned out to be the cheapest way, but the connections were long and you need to be mentally and physically ready for it. On the Tomorrowland website you can buy a direct transfer to DreamVille directly from the airport, which will save you a lot of time.

Cost

The whole trip for one cost around €1100. Of that - €550 ticket and accommodation, €120 for flights, €100 for transfers, locker, restaurant, and the rest for food and drinks.

Impressions

I am a fan of this genre of music and the whole festival was a great pleasure. There was an ocean of emotions, I really liked everything. I heard all the top DJs of the world, saw an amazing light and pyrotechnic show. Tomorrowland takes into account all the little things, I have never seen such a level of organization before. In general, the festival has a friendly and pleasant atmosphere. We were also lucky with the weather: it wasn't raining and hot, so it was comfortable. Now, a year before the next Tomorrowland, I am already planning the trip.

By the way, before the trip, we read all the instructions on the Tomorrowland website, as well as similar reviews to mine on the internet. It helped a lot on the trip: we didn't spend extra money, were prepared for everything that might happen on the trip and knew exactly what to do.