Dark Lord Day (2023)

You misunderstood his post. He’s estimating ticket sales are down 60%, which would be very noticeable shitfaced or no.

I agree though it is a big guess to say people are only buying the earliest available group and therefore since group B is still available, no one has bought any in C-E. We can assume at least 5-7k in attendance though with deluxe and group A selling out if FFF offered the same number of tickets per group as 2019.

 

Where in the underverse of math does one group still having some tickets available equate to 60% or 8-10k fewer people?!

 

Where are you getting that anyone is talking about “one group?” Groups B-E are not sold out. So that’s 4 of the 5 groups not sold out, but factoring in the 300 deluxe tickets that sold out and assuming some of Group B and a lower percentage of the other groups are sold.

Beer on the Wall straight up told me that they were not doing shuttles this year because of what they perceived to be low interest, so however you want to spin it, the FOMO is off for at least this year.

 

If you pick best available on the ticketing website, you get group B. There's still tickets left for every other group as well. Group A is the only one sold out. Sure, some people selected a particular group they wanted, so some tickets in the later groups have sold, but most people just went with best available. I have a hunch that the majority of Group C-E tickets are unspoken for, and will remain that way. That's where we're getting the much lower attendance estimates.

 

This discussion has only ever been about group B that I have seen, and since I'm not going back to the website day after day or hour after hour to check what tickets might be available like you guys are, group B is what I thought you two were specifically stating as remaining. Since you both are revisiting the site maybe you should have made it clear that other groups were also available.

Generally, I usually go with the philosophy that I don't know what I don't know, so I don't make broad assumptions like you guys are about these numbers, pretty much ever. I also don't agree with the assumption that A is the most desired group, at least anymore, especially since it never has been for me, even when the odds were different back when variants started becoming more well distributed throughout the fest 2015 or 2016.

Anyway, more tickets being available in conjunction with getting the word out in more accessible markets like grocery stores should give more casual beer fest fans a chance to decide they want to make the dive. The more the merrier. But then again, the reduction in line length certainly isn't unwelcome.

Only time will tell. Considering they held a well-attended, drive-thru bottle release for three years without a festival, I'm sure they were able to gauge during that time what the interest level was for the beer itself, and have accounted for whatever bump in interest an in-person festival might create.

It just comes across like you're rooting for this to be drastically underattended, and I'm not really seeing any reasonable justification for that. Especially when you consider that the amount of regular DL we can take away is the lowest its been since I've been attending, while the amount of take away variant bottles is at its highest.

 

I’m in agreement with the theory that if the site is still pushing B then C, D and E remain largely unsold. If you can pick up bottles anytime during or after your group time, why wouldn’t you get the earliest available group to give you more flexibility and piece of mind in getting your bottles? I probably won’t show up until after noon, but I went for A so I’m not pigeonholed into a time slot.

Maybe we vastly underestimated how much people wanted multiple bottles of regular.

 

This is actually a good point though...I did notice a fair amount of grumbling about that on Facebook, which blew my mind, despite the fact that I actually enjoy regular.

 

I grabbed Group C. However, I'm sure there's still plenty of tickets left beyond Group B.

 

Hell, maybe the machine is so efficient they don’t care about groups anymore and they’ll print off as many A’s as people want. The process is really simple now- scan the bracelet, snap off a piece and walk up to get your preassembled bag. Not like slow line days of old where people got to choose a variant and verify a golden ticket.

Let’s hope each group isn’t 10,000 people because those leftover tickets are going to move when they announce the mystery band as Metallica.

 

That’s some very selective (bad faith?) reading to ignore that my post specifically talks about C-E and then claim “we were only talking about B.”

Now you are attributing extrapolations of data shared as “rooting” for something? Find me the quote where me or anyone else said “I hope this fails”. Saying the hype is gone is not hoping for failure, it’s a reasonable conclusion based on the slowest ticket sales in the event’s history.

Maybe just take the L on your misinterpretation next time instead of writing a book trying to blame others for your confusion.

 

Gentlemen, this argument must be tabled until DLD and settled in the Bottle Share Circle of Death.

 

I envision this like the drinking contest in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

 

Bottle Share Circle of Death rules:

Disagreements between two parties to be settled in the Bottle Share Circle of Death. Each disagreer enters the circle with 72ozs of the best whales they have to offer to the Dark Lord. They alternate pouring samples for the judges gathered around the circle until all whales have been exhausted. The judges then rule on which parties’ offering was the best. The winner will be announced as having the rightful argument within the disagreement and the loser will be ostracized by having two 36oz bottles of artificially flavored malt liquor taped to their hands as a sign of their disappointing the Dark Lord.

 

How did we come to this conclusion?

 

Did drive through DLD kill off regular DLD the way remote working has killed the office?

Or was the comorbidity rate amongst neckbeards during the pandemic greatly underestimated?

 

The original post I was responding to was about Group B only. The idea that Group B was still available therefore Group C-E were totally untouched as a logical assumption did not even enter my mind considering everyone I know, myself included, intentionally chose later groups as soon as we logged in for presale tickets. And that was the last time I even opened the ticket sale website until just now. I didn't even realize people used the Best Available option to navigate ticket sales considering there is no universally accepted definition for what is "best" at this festival.

My question was how does group B not selling out equate to 8-10k fewer people. So I incorrectly assumed you guys had some other justification for the assumption that there were vast sums of tickets unsold in all groups besides that absurd basis of thought. These assumptions being further illustrated only sound more absurd with each new post, because even more unfounded assumptions continue to be piled on top.

Now who is the one misreading who I was specifically responding to with that statement?

Exactly. As @HouseofWortship said, we have no idea how many tickets each group is allotted, if there is any limit at all, and whether they are evenly distributed.

 

I'm definitely not rooting for an under-attended DLD, just making observations. I think the Covid hiatus really hurt momentum for the in-person festival. After 3 years of no festival, I think a number of people are used to living without it and ok sitting out this year. I'm one of those people. I attended every year the festival was held starting in 2010. It was a can't miss event for me. Then Covid happened, we took a break for the last 3 years, and I'm just used to not going now. The FOMO isn't there like it once was. As an out-of-towner the logistics and cost of tickets, travel, and monopolizing 3 days around the festival just doesn't feel worth it as much. If I lived in the Chicagoland area, I think there's still a good chance I'd go. But it's just not as easy coming from out of state. My concern is if the fest ticket sales are way under what they expected, what is the break even point for 3 Floyd's? They were obviously planning for the infrastructure, supplies, and security for a very large event like year's past. Can they scale it way down if they need to, or are they already invested in the big festival? Is it even worth it to hold the festival with much lower demand? This really feels like it could be the last year they ever do it, and the end of an era.

 

I will say, I am not attending Dark Lord Day and the big reason is all my friends who I would go with (like 10-12 people) are all like "fuck this, I never want to do that again". Its a bummer but I think there's been a big shift in the mindset and probably the drinking habits of the previously diehard Dark Lord Day fans.