Dark Lord Day 2016

Here's a few other random pics from Friday...

 

Phew. Made it to the end of this thread after not reading since Friday. That took a while.

I'm back home in Nor-Cal. This was me and my friends 3rd. My GF and his Wife's first. Good time as always. My combo of rubber boots, PVC pants, gor-tex jacket, and poncho kept me warm and dry all day. Packpack was heavy but never left me. Good and secure. (5.11 Rush 12)

I'll share my thoughts along with the others.
Good: Most people, bottle shares, bathroom lines, tap lines, DL bottle line.
Bad: Weather (duh), North Gate line, a handful of bad people, tap list.

I actually look forward to the DL bottle line a bit because it's a great opportunity to bottle share. That didn't happen this year at all. I was group D, went in earlier than scheduled, and walked straight through. Same thing for my friends in group E.

The north line was really a mess. We got there around noon, and it took us an hour and a half to get it. The bottleneck was them searching every bag, multiple ID checks, and one small tent to do all of this. Multiple bag check tents will solve this issue quite easily. Also there was no bathroom in the north line, so that caused some issues. I paced myself and was ok.

My biggest disappointment was the taps. I was very active walking between the tap stations. I got one pour of DL16, Power Bottom kicked right before me. Those were the only DLs I saw. It seems like the earlier you were there the better the taps were. Late in the day there was no DL that I saw anywhere. Just 3F shelf. (I drank the crap out of ZD!)

Highlight was a guy who fell down in front of the porta potties and wallowed around trying to get up. His buddy was trying to help, but was wasn't working. It was a glorious disaster. LOL.

All in all DLD is what you make it to be. We all had a great time and hope to go back again next year!

 

Dark Lord Day Lessons by year:

2007 - Remember to bring beer
2008 - Remember to get there on time
2009 - Remember to actually buy tickets
2010 - Remember to not skip the bands (Monotonix played)
2011 - Remember to not bring someone who isn't in to beer to DLD then have to leave early.
2012 - Remember to actually check out the guest taps
2013 - Remember to not setup a bunch of trades and have to lug tons of extra bottles around
2014 - Remember to wear sunscreen even though it was cloudy
2015 - Remember to wear waterproof boots
2016 - Remember to use your vouchers

 

Strange. I'm pretty sure I was farther back than 100 in group B and I got the Militia. I was shocked and excited when I got to the variant room because I fully expected both vanilla variants to be gone. When I initially lined up, I was back by the exit point (this was before they were letting people into the cattle line).

 

The only real asswipe I ran into was by the southeast corner of the north tent. Late afternoon he holds his arms up like he's an NFL blocker and just bulldozed into the tent, running over a group of people. When a guy called him on it, he turned and did the tough guy stare down. I was hoping he'd get a beat down, but at least it slowed him down. He was clearly trying to start a fight. Total douche. I don't understand people who want to get in a fight. Probably small packages and they're trying to compensate....

 

The singular tent to check tickets & hand out vouchers was a huge part of the problem. They tried having a line to each side of the scanner but there simply wasn't enough room. Once you squeezed through that area, they had 6 or so people to check bags. They should've set it up to have 5 or 6 distinct lines where the handled the tickets and vouchers and then set up an area a bit further away to check bags before entering the gates and it would've been much smoother. Too much going on in too tight of a space to be efficient with people in rain gear & carrying backpacks.

 

Oh yea for what it's worth I entered on the south side and before i finished unzipping the smallest pouch in my backpack, the lady said "you're good, go ahead". So she didn't even take a full look in the smallest of three pouches in the pack. I'm sure this lack of depth helped lead to a smoother south entering process.

 

It wasn't different up North, and the North remembers.

 

My buddy had a poncho over him and his backpack and carried a cooler bag. They just checked his cooler bag and completely ignored his backpack. Probably just thought he was a hunchback.

I was also glad to see there was no uber surge pricing when I left the festival at around 6:30pm. I came on the Jak's shuttle and didn't see it as the line kept growing so I just called an uber back to Jak's. Cost $60 for the hour long ride

 

Or 2016 could be 'Remember taser to use on thieves'

 

The answer is no. I purchased a set of the gold rimmed FFF glasses. They cost $15.

 

This makes me glad I was able to easily get on a bus around 5:30-5:45 back to Jak's. They had a couple leave right around the same time because I was separated from my friend at some point and he ended up on one 5-10 minutes before me. Maybe that's why there was a long line around 6:30.

I'm still amazed at the difference between the north and south entrances. It makes zero sense. The lady that checked my bag seemed to do a pretty thorough job - I just turned around and felt her opening pockets, looking around, then she said I was good. Maybe it helped that the south line also pretty much all had wristbands before 10, as they had a lot of workers walking down the line checking ID's and giving them out. We did still have to show ID again at the entrance, though.

 

My original question that he answered was about the DM glasses, not the FFF-only ones. It sounds like the set of FFF only glasses were $15, while a set of DM/FFF ones were $25. So, if you got 2 platinum and 2 gold DM/FFF glasses, then you paid $50...as I apparently did.

 

I'm either annoyed at the wheels for not rolling out from under him, or annoyed with you for not waiting around to provide an update.

 

South line was smooth. They didn't check my bag whatsoever

 

Yep I'm in the $50 crowd. I didn't care for the silver ones so got 4 of the gold Dark Matter ones (me and my buddy split them).

My only regret from the event was not getting that bottle opener

 

LIES!

*That or I didn't pay any actual attention to the entire conversation, missed out on the relevant part and interjected falsely.

 

He definitely did end up tipping over and brought that poor can down with him....and as someone also mentioned earlier, he was standing upright assed out for a good 20-30min.

 

See, if they allowed weapons on the grounds, it would cut down a whole bunch of this douchebaggery.

 

What could possibly go wrong with a bunch of drunken idiots armed to the teeth?