I might go this year with my son who is 17.
Is it a party 24 hours a day so that I won’t get any (or very little) sleep? I noticed they have an area for family camping , is that just for people with young kids?
How close to the stages can I get? I don’t want to be right up front but I don’t want to be far back either.
Any other advice you can provide would be very helpful.
I’m actually interested in going this year too (first time), so I’m interested to read everyone’s Bonnaroo experiences.
Don’t want to hijack too much, but here’s a couple questions: there are different ticket levels, but I can’t find an explanation of what paying an extra $10 or $20 gets you, if anything (I’m not considering VIP stuff). Also, what is the regular (non-family) camping like? First come first served? How many people per camping spot?
I should add that I camp 2 or 3 times a year so I don’t mind camping at all. I live in NC so I’m used to camping in the south in June.
This year will be my fourth 'Roo in a row.
I’ve never had trouble sleeping, but usually because I’ve been so wiped out by the end of the day. I think a lot of people feel that way, so it ends up being pretty chill at the campsites. (Individual experiences may vary, of course.) I’ve never been to family camping.
Depends on the stage. The What Stage is the big stage for the headliners, and it’s a huge bowl-shaped venue that holds about 100,000 people. If you want to be right up front (which is still pretty far away, relatively speaking) they have a section that you can wait in line for that they clear out after every set. So if there’s a particular band you want to be close for, you can get there. Otherwise you’ll be far away, but the sight lines are excellent. (It helps if you’re tall. I’m really, really not.)
The Which Stage is smaller and located in the main part of Centeroo. (The What Stage is almost like a separate area.) It’s a big flat field, and once it gets crowded it’s hard to get a good spot or even a good place to see from if you’re short.
Then there are the tents–This Tent, That Tent, and The Other Tent. They’re big covered sheds, standing room only. They tend to clear out between bands, so if you time it right and you’re willing to wait you can be right up next to the stage. Even if you get there late you can push in pretty close, or you can usually snag a spot outside the tent to chill on the grass. (I usually spend 90% of Bonnaroo in the tents.)
I think it’s a blast, especially if you’re an experienced camper and you love hearing a lot of different kinds of music. The one thing I’d warn about is that there are a LOT of drugs, and they’re fairly out in the open. But most people are surprisingly responsible about using them, and I’ve never felt like I was in the least bit of danger from anybody while I was there.
There’s no difference. They have so many tickets available at a certain price level, and once those sell out they sell them at the next price up. So you can buy them a little cheaper by getting them earlier. (I’m not really sure how it works–I have a media pass.)
The camping area is a slightly glorified grass parking lot. I was solo last year, and I had just enough room for my car, my tent, and a 10x10 canopy with some creative spacing. If you want a bigger space, you need to park some cars together. (I was with some friends in an RV the other two times, which is definitely the way to go if you can.)
They also have “tent only” camping, where you park like usual but instead of setting up at your car you can hike up to an area right next to Centeroo. It tends to be a free-for-all with a tent on every possible square inch, but it’s worth considering if you get there early enough to grab some space and you can be mobile.
There’s no way to know where you’ll end up. You might get there when the gates open and be two miles from Centeroo, and you might show up the next day and be right up close. No one has figured out the optimum time to show up for the best car camping spot, and it probably changes from year to year anyway.
If it’s still anything like when I went, be prepared for lots of open drug use and people under the influence of…well everything. People will also constantly be asking if you want to join them. The dealers walk around loudly announcing what they have for sale.
I recommend getting there as early as you possibly can for getting a good campsite. If you want to get rest, the further away from the stages you are, the better. Also you might get lucky and end up next to some trees and still be close to the exit.
Once all the bands are done for the day everyone is usually pretty tired out and low key. But this all depends on who is around you. You may end up in a nice quiet area, or surrounded by all night partiers. It’s a crap-shoot.
Getting close to the stages depends on who is playing and how early you show up. There are people that claim a spot hours before the band they want to see is supposed to play. Also be prepared for delays, it’s not uncommon for the bands to come on late.
This year will be my third 'roo in four years. I missed last year.
It’s a party 24 hours a day if you want it to be, but you can go off and do your own thing, and no one will bother you. I do a mix of the two. Thursday is pretty quiet, with people still getting there, things pick up on Friday, get kinda nuts late that night and into Sunday morning, then calm down again. As mentioned, there is flagrant drug use, and the cops seem to be there more to protect and help than arrest the dealers and users. They don’t care unless you’re causing trouble.
The campground is far enough away from Centeroo that you can sleep easily. As mentioned, it’s just a grass parking lot. I suggest you park, jump out, and throw your stuff behind you to claim as large an area as you can before the cars behind you pull in. That’s how my friend and I got enough space last year, and I’m going to do it again in June.
Getting close to the big stages requires getting there fairly early. If you want to see DMB or Jay-Z, get there EARLY for the show BEFORE them, and be prepared to push through to the front. I got to see Tool pretty close in 2007 by doing this, but it was impossible to get too close to Pearl Jam in 2008, and I left the Metallica show because it was too nuts.
It’s much easier, though still not a breeze, to get to the smaller stages. Just plan in advance.
My two biggest pieces of advice are bring a portable chair with a back because YOUR FEET WILL KILL YOU, and buy a camelback and fill it up with either water or a sports drink. I don’t care how much fluid you drink, you are going to be pissing neon from the dehydration. I also suggest a tarp for shade, a flagpole with a distinctive flag so you know where you’re parked for a distance. You WILL get lost trying to find your campsite the first few times. We’re talking square miles of cars, here; An ocean of automobiles.
I hope you get to go. Speaking as an atheist with no spiritual bent, Bonnaroo is almost religious to me. I am not joking when I say it’s the closest I’ve ever come to understanding spirituality and togetherness. It’s an amazing experience, and I’m taking someone to their first one this year. I’m as excited to be there for her on her first experience as I am to just go again, myself.
Lots of open drug use? Now that’s a shocker!! 
No Bible classes I guess.
How far is it from most of the camping to the main stages? On average, I know the campsites are big.
My experience (and what I was able to gather from the various message boards last year) says that it doesn’t really matter what time you show up, since you don’t get to choose where you are and they don’t necessarily fill it up from good to bad. There was speculation that they were deliberately giving bad campsites to people who were showing up hours before the gates were supposed to open, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s just luck.
I was in one of the more distant campsites last year and it was a 20 minute walk to Centeroo. There are golf cart taxis at $5/person, which was totally worth it at the end of the day.
Anyone have experience with both Bonaroo and Dead tours? Clearly there’s vast differences between the two (one being stationary and all), but I’m wondering if the scene at the show is anything similar.
While you don’t get to pick your site, they do fill up from back to front and the better sites seem to be in the back closer to the owner’s house.
The main stages are What Stage, and Which Stage, and they’re near the back of Centeroo, away from the Farm. You’re probably looking at twenty minutes to a half hour from most camping spots, but there are other stages about five or ten minutes closer, depending on where you’re entering Centeroo.
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Moved to Cafe Society at OP’s request.
IMHO > CS
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Thanks for everyone’s responses!
Most times of the day the limiting reagent to getting from your campsite to Centeroo isn’t the distance, but the wait to get into the gate. Standing there for 30 minutes isn’t uncommon at peak entry times, especially early on when they’re thoroughly searching everybody’s bags. (God knows they’re not really keeping any drugs out; the main goal is probably to make sure nobody is bringing in outside beer.)
I take it all the stages and food, etc are in Centeroo? And the bathrooms and showers are out in the camping area?
I looked for a map on the website but can’t find one.
I went the year Radiohead/Beck/Tom Petty headlined and thought it was hell on earth. The “campground” is en enormous field completely filled with cars. Trees are only near the edges and walking areas - your tent will not be beneath one.
You get six feet behind your car for a tent. You will be surrounded by people using/buying/selling drugs and paraphernalia 24 hours of the day. The shows end earlyish (I think 2 AM) and everyone funnels back to the campground to unwind for a few hours. It doesn’t get anywhere close to quiet until 4 or 5 in the morning.
Don’t forget this is the ass end of Tennessee in the middle of the summer. It is boiling hot. By 7AM your tent will be an unbearable furnace, don’t plan on sleeping inside after the sun comes up. There are lines for water, lines for a dangling hose, and every inch of shade is occupied by a dirty hippy trying to sell shiny trinkets.
From your campsite it is about a 30 to 45 minute walk to the cordoned off show area. Some venues have tents, but again, every inch of these tents is full with people actively avoiding the blistering sun. It will cost you 8 bucks for a lemonade - a price that you will pay because you weren’t allowed to bring in your Nalgene water bottle.
Finally, the music is not venue quality. Most sets are about 50 minutes long and the artists aren’t breaking ground - they will play their main hits then drop their instruments and flee the stage. The sound quality is what you’d expect from a couple speakers on a stage.
Do not go if you want to enjoy music. You won’t. If you enjoy doing drugs and getting a sunburn, go.
That seems to me what they’re doing, but they don’t even try that very hard, either. I carried in most of a six pack in 2008, and though they don’t let you in with open bottles, they don’t check the contents of camelbacks.
All the stages, yes. There is food outside Centeroo, though, and bathrooms are both inside and outside the area. I can’t say about the showers. It’s a field in Tennessee in June, so there’s no hope of staying clean, and I believe they charge you if you don’t bring your own solar shower. I just use baby wipes for four days.
Here is a map. The Farm is huge.
It’s within an hour of its capital and second-largest city, even closer to another medium sized city of 80,000, and about an hour and a half from Chattanooga, a city of over 150,000. Hardly the ass end of the state.
I don’t know what a Nalgene water bottle is, but a lot of people carry camelbacks. I also walked into Centeroo with two one gallon jugs of water the last year I went. If it’s unopened, they will let you pass.
I won’t argue set-length, which IS short for most of the acts, nor will I argue the sound quality because I’m not an audiophile, but at the same time, I’ve never had a problem with the music, or even the playlists. They’re going to play most of their hits because there are going to be lots of unfamiliar people in the crowd, but I’ve also been well-pleased with some of the artists’ choices. It all depends on who you go to see.
This I flatly deny. I’m not a heavy drug user, but I love music, and Bonnaroo is often the highlight of my summer, as well as one of my favorite experiences each year I’ve went.
It could be hot but since it’s early June it’s possible it might not be hot. Here in NC we sometimes get nice Spring days into June, it’s the luck of the draw.
Do most people arrive on Thurs? If I go I won’t get there until Thurs. around 5 PM.
