Dark Lord (2018)

More than the drinking, I’d say this depends on what terrible food decisions are made throughout the day.

Many a toilet will be destroyed the next morning.

 

The most important thing is tickets. You must needs have a ticket to enter the grounds - so, I would suggest you begin setting up your multi-device ticket securing system...

How many devices do you have? IPads, cell phones, towers, laptops....?

I would double what you have. Trust me - you need more power. more options. more devices!

Then, wait for the announced ticket sales window, and then experience the joy of crashing websites the minute you were about to score prime tix, and in Group A**.

**(Editor's note - Group A is no longer a thing, unless 3 Floyds decides this year to again change how variants are distributed, in which case Group A may become a thing again, but I digress.)

 

I do wonder what the change for DLD will be this year. My hope is for elimination of group tickets and just going with distributing random variant + DL allotment in commemorative tote bag (very important) as you leave the festival for good. You should be able to leave the festival to go to the car, hotel, etc and come back in as you want, but when you decide to leave for good and collect your bottles, that's it. No more coming back in. This would do several things:

1. Eliminate the theft of bottles during the fest.
2. Eliminate the need to carry allotment all day as you stumble around.
3. Eliminate any long lines for the bottle collection and in turn would promote additional sales for taps and other merchandise (those lines would be longer though, which is not a bad thing since people don't mind standing in lines and bottle sharing while they wait).
4. Some people would forget to collect their allotment at the end of the day and therefore leave some coveted variants for the following year to be handed out as a random variant.
5. People that just want the bottles and don't care about the festival could just collect their bottles and leave, which would open the fest area for those that want to enjoy DLD itself.

 

Except.... can you imagine the end-of-the day cluster when the entire drunk festival lines up for their bottles 10 minutes before close?

 

Yeah, there would be a line, but having lasted to the end of the festival the 2 of the 3 years I went, there's a relatively small number of people that last to the end and it's pretty easy to just snap off the tab and hand a bag to someone. I could see the line moving pretty quickly, like tha group ones do, but there would be no cattle herd line occupying space and people needlessly waiting for their group time to become open for allotment collection.

 

Have you stuck around until the end? That place becomes a ghost town well before the end- like no line for Vanilla DL drafts ghost town. That wouldn't be an issue.

However:

I think the issue with collecting these as you leave (though I would be fine with it) is that there are a significant number of people who leave because they hit the wall unexpectedly. Having to wait in a line to leave when people are on the verge of passing out is probably not in FFF's best interest unless they get kickbacks from the local ambulance company.

Once change I would like to see is to ask vendors like Dark Matter to bring enough of the bottled coffees so everyone attending can purchase one. This limited stuff creates long lines early. If they wind up with a surplus I'm sure FFF can purchase these and sell them out of the pub in a matter of weeks or DM can move them at their retail locations.

 

lmao

 

Oh, someone or some people leave in an ambulance every year.

 

And some just pass out underneath a police car.

 

I can't even remember a year where I didn't see someone getting in an ambulance before Noon.

 

If it pleaseth the Dark Lord

 

Not a More stout, per se, but you can bet there will be plenty of bottles of Vanillanoize

 

Holy smokes, was Assassin really on tap at DLD last year?

 

The only assassin at DLD I was aware of was there to protect my bottles....

 

And please keep in mind, the stuff you are looking at on the tap list if there was probably available to less than 1% of fest goers before it kicked....if you are going based on that tap list you are going to be very disappointed when you get there.

 

For sure, which is why I'm questioning it. It's all probably moot anyway, because I have no luck getting tickets every year.

 

Getting tickets hasn't been difficult really, as long as you're not trying for Group A, and last year group didn't matter. Group E was popping up for me all day into the evening.

 

I wonder if Group A tickets will still be gone first with people mistakenly thinking it will be 1st come-1st serve somehow. I actually want group A tickets because I like getting there early, getting my bottles early and then hanging out for rest of the fest.

 

I like to try and get group B for same reason. But yeah, other than schedule reasons, means a whole lot less now.

 

That’s a good point. I think I actually went for A last year not knowing.