You've probably all heard the news about the catastrophe that was Bloc 2012, but I thought I would share my recollection of events.
At this present time I am extremely annoyed at the organisers attitude towards their customers, and although they have said on their official website that there will be refunds etc, I am still awaiting some sort of apology!
On the website and on our e-tickets it stated that the gates open at 2.00pm, after two hours of being moved to different gates they eventually opened at 4.00pm.
When we got into the festival, we thought the layout was confusing because there was a boat, a few food and beer tents and a couple of rides (which were extortionate) and that was it! So we eventually got pretty bored, until we discovered another pathway of the festival which led to nothing.The only act we really got to enjoy was Amon Tobin, after that the queues were too large and too unorganised to stand in. So we were left wandering around the site with nothing to do until 6.00am for the site to close.
You can imagine the shock when we were told to leave just after twelve. We had nowhere to go because we were planning on enjoying the festival until stated closing times (6.00am) There were no trains to get us back home as we don't live in London, so the shuttle buses were useless, and too packed.
When we asked a policeman if there was somewhere warm we could go, he simply replied "I don't know." Soon after, all the lights were switched off leaving us and other festival goers literally in the dark.
We spent the night sleeping on some grass outside the DLR station because we had nowhere to go, which was not only uncomfortable but also dangerous. Come 5.00am we bumped into other Bloc festival goers from Belgium who had also had to sleep rough due to this complete and utter disaster of an event.
Ideally I would like our tickets AND our train fares refunded, but we shall have to wait and see what happens.
I would also like to add that this mess was not caused by the people who attended Bloc. From my experience I didn't see anyone being violent or aggressive towards staff, nor did I see anyone jumping over fences or off the boat. What I saw was people who were confused, disappointed, and trying to make the best out of a bad situation.
Were you at Bloc, or know anyone who was there? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
