Thousands of attendees at Irvine’s inaugural Daisy Chain Fields music festival this weekend were stranded for hours after performances ended — stuck in lines of traffic, sitting on the curb waiting for rideshares or struggling to get cell service to connect with family and friends.
The single-day benefit music festival raised at least $20 million dollars for nonprofits that support women and girls, Grammy-winning pop singer Olivia Rodrigo announced at the event.
But after the music stopped, many of the majority-female festival-goers were forced to walk for miles at night to catch rides home from the Great Park.
Some others who paid $95 to park on-site were stuck getting out of parking lots. Some attendees who paid $50 to catch a shuttle from the Honda Center or UCI also met delays to get a ride back to their vehicles.
[Read: How Equipped is Irvine to Handle Olivia Rodrigo’s Music Festival?]
City leaders confirmed they’re already in discussion to bring the festival back next year.
“The fact that Irvine was selected to be a home base for this for its inaugural year is resounding,” said Melissa Haley, director of communications and engagement for Irvine, in a Monday afternoon phone call. “We’re more than pleased and absolutely think it was a success.”
She said the city is in discussions with C3 Presents, the company that produced the event, to bring Daisy Chain Fields back next year but nothing has been solidified yet.
Live Nation has owned a 51% stake in C3 since 2014.
“What we’re doing is waiting to get through this festival that just ended and take the opportunity to spend some time together and debrief and go from there,” Haley said. “We look forward to continuing those discussions and hopefully Irvine can become home of the Daisy Chain Fields festival moving forward.”
While the performances and experiences within the festival grounds received high marks, most of the criticism surrounded guests struggling to get back to their homes or hotel rooms after a full day under the Southern California sun.
The traffic nightmare after the festival ended mirrored the city’s Fourth of July event from last year. While the city expected about 20,000 people to attend that celebration, over 40,000 people showed up, leading to delayed programming and severe traffic jams.
It was the first time such an event was held at the Great Park — producing so much demand that this year’s Fourth of July celebration was canceled after city leaders ran out of time to secure necessary vendors for things like street closures.
[Read: Can Irvine’s Great Park Handle Large-Scale Events?]
Ahead of this year’s music festival, city leaders assured the public that there was a “robust plan in place” to coordinate traffic and parking among the city leaders, private parking companies and C3 Presents.
After Daisy Chain Fields concluded on Saturday, there was confusion regarding street closures and exit strategies for many of the over 45,000 attendees that were at the sold-out event.
The Irvine Great Park typically hosts concerts for a maximum of 10,000 people.
Irvine’s spokesperson Haley said some of the slow exit experiences were typical for a festival of its size but said the city will study what happened in order to make improvements for future festivals or concerts at the Great Park.
“That’s normal festival behavior for anyone who goes to Coachella or Stagecoach or Governor’s Ball or EDM or a weekend concert at Sofi Stadium,” she said, referring to guests who waited up to an hour for a shuttle. “There’s an expectation for any concert-goer that there’s going to be a wait time to exit.”
Yet many festival-goers took to social media after the event to air grievances about getting out.
Scores recounted the multiple hours it took after the end of the festival to catch a rideshare or find a way out of parking lots through several blocked streets and traffic. One social media user said the city wasn’t prepared for 45,000 attendees and called it one of the worst festival exit experiences she’s ever had.
Kimberly Chaleco, a Costa Mesa resident, wasn’t able to order a rideshare to take her home after the festival until nearly 1 a.m. — after walking over a mile from the festival grounds.
“It was a bummer that after having a great day at the festival, it felt like both the organizers and the city didn’t seem to care about people’s ability to get home safely,” Chaleco said. “Everywhere you looked, there were groups of young girls and families frantically trying to find a way home.”
Haley said the shuttles weren’t utilized as much as hoped, leaving many people instead waiting for an Uber or Lyft to take them away from the park.
She said some of the pickup areas could see improvements, like the designated zone for parents to pick up their kids, but city leaders still need to discuss those details.
“We haven’t had the chance to sit down as a team yet and identify what those [improvements] are,” Haley continued. “We all just know that there is always room for improvement.”
Overall, Haley said the event was successful despite the festival occurring during a Southern California heat wave with temperatures that reached 95 degrees.
“The city considers the event to be a success. It was a wonderful day, outside of the heat,” she said.
“What an amazing day to have a festival of that size — more than 45,000 individuals in attendance — to come celebrate the advancement of women and girls, to support this incredible venture [and] to have $20 million raised.”
She also said Marine Way will be open all the way through next summer, which will help traffic flow if the festival returns. Haley also said the city needs to debrief with C3 Presents to discuss widespread spotty cell service that impacted many of the guests.
Irvine City Council members are expected to review a presentation about the event at an upcoming meeting, Haley said, adding that it would include the exit aftermath for concert-goers and economic impacts.
Angelina Hicks is the Voice of OC Collegiate News Service Editor. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.
