Fyre Festival Head Previously Accused Of Scamming Millennials

Fyre Festival is reportedly doomed despite its luxurious promises of a music festival on Great Exuma in the Bahamas this weekend. Apparently, those who have attended the festival took to Twitter to complain about disorganizations, headliners backing out, and inadequate housing in a “tent city.”

According to Business Insider, the doomed Fyre Festival had thousands of guests who have paid for weekend passes for the rather large prices of $450 and $12,000. Despite the promises of a luxurious weekend with music in the Bahamas, they were faced with a rather disappointing scenario. Attendees found themselves utterly stranded in the beautiful island while organizers scramble to arrange their flights back to Miami.

Numerous attendees posted rather convincing photos of the event on Instagram, showing that the promise of luxurious food and holding areas were an overstatement. Moreover, Rolling Stone reported that these attendees who have paid a good amount of money for the Fyre Festival not only found themselves stranded, but with no bands, missing luggage, and for some unfortunate folks, no place to stay.

The chaotic end result of the Fyre Festival only adds to the previous accusations against Billy McFarland who founded Magnises. The latter is a social-networking startup that charges an annual fee of $250 on members in order to get discounted prices to exclusive events. Apparently, the said startup was not delivering on the perks and promises they advertised and members have recounted similar stories of not receiving tickets on time.

There were several disappointing mishaps present in the members’ stories including scheduling fails, cancelled trip a day before it was supposed to take place. One of the most worrisome horror stories regarding McFarlan’s Magnises is that members have received unwanted charges on their credit cards from the startup. Upon questioning these charges, refunds would happen after a month since discovery.

Following the accusations against McFarland, some even going as far as calling it a scam, the Fyre Festival guests have been sending out distress signals via social media for the past 24 hours, claiming that they were unable to leave the island. Meanwhile, those responsible for promoting and organizing the Fyre Festival have remained tight-lipped about the dreadful situation.

However, in an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, Billy McFarland, the 25-year-old Fyre Fest co-organizer with rapper Ja Rule has expressed his regrets about the situation. Moreover, McFarland also promises refunds and is hoping for a make-p festival next year.

The interview revealed that the Exumas was a place that did not have great infrastructure, to begin with and it was already a long shot to get guests in the venue of the Fyre Festival. Organizers admit to being too ambitious with the event they had planned. Apparently, the Exumas did not have reliable water or sewage which forced organizers to basically build a city out of nothing.

Despite the challenges they faced while organizing the Fyre Festival, organizers used all their personal resources to make the event happen. However, after all their efforts, a bad storm came to the Exumas on the morning of the festival. The unpredictable weather resulted in broken tents and water pipes chiming in with the arrival of the guests. With their plate being very full, both with problems and guests checking in, chaos was bound to happen.

As organizers rushed to fix the damages of the storm, guests found themselves unable to check in and numerous delays were experienced by the attendees. As the chaos grew, the truth became apparent; the organizers cannot handle this. They were unable to predict the natural disaster that hit their event and did not have the resources to solve the problems it left in its wake.

According to organizers, they made sure that all the guest had a place to stay and explained the situations once everyone had a roof over their heads. They were able to identify the safety challenges that were impossible to ignore and decided to work on refunding the guests.

As a result, all the guests had to go home and the refunds were being processed. However, the path home was not a friendly one as well as the weather problems spelled out delayed flights which were beyond the control of the organizers. Despite the latter, the guests still found the situation utterly unacceptable and the organizers felt bad for it.

In light of the disaster that is the Fyre Festival, organizers were able to identify that they should have made timeframes that were correct and perhaps weatherproof. Learning from the chaos that took place, organizers found that they should start earlier next year. Ultimately, they were quite naive to think that they could pull off a challenging event in a not-so-great venue all by themselves and have admitted to it.

Organizers claim that they will do their best to make things right for everyone involved. Apparently, there will be make-up dates, May 2018 in the United States and it will be free for everyone who signed up for the Fyre Festival. Moreover, they will also donate $1.50 (per ticket) to the Bahamian Red Cross.

Conclusively, organizers have decided to keep their theme of water and beach for next year’s Fyre Festival. They will offer not just music but all forms of entertainment as well. As for their plans to avoid another repeat of this year’s chaotic festival, they will make sure not to take on everything by themselves and see to it that the venue can support them.

[Featured Image By Kevin Winter/Getty Images]