|
Hard Rock Hell Festival Review
First of all my apologies for the lateness of the review, its been a long time coming but it still gives you plenty of time to decide whether or not you wish to check out The Hard Rock Hell Festival at Prestatyn Sands. This review will give you a step by step Walk through of the Festivals Facilities and give you an idea of what it has to offer.
Tickets.
There are several ticket options available to Festival goers at Hard Rock Hell 2 of the highest priced of which sell out mega quickly so you would need to book the next years tickets at the first year you were going. The festival offers VIP, Gold Plus, Gold and Silver Tickets. All of which provide on site accommodation in one of the chalets. I'm not going to go into details about all of them but all the information is available on the festival website. For this Review I’m going to tell you about the best ticket you can get for your money, and that is the VIP ticket.
Registration
As with all festivals there is the struggle of the registration when we arrived on the Thursday (which being VIP gives you access to, and includes a chance to see some extra bands) the check in desks were not as packed as I expected, So it was only a short wait to be seen.
We handed over our details in the form of a printed out confirmation email with registration number e.t.c. And were then told they had lost our envelope containing tickets and for some of us press access passes.
After waiting 20 minutes or so they handed over the press passes, but not the VIP tickets with the confusion of because we had press access we did not need the VIP tickets even though these had been booked separately.
After this confusion we had been given our chalet key which was to an upper floor chalet even though a lower floor chalet had been booked a year in advance, and as one of festival goers was disabled was necessary. Despite all this we were told that if we wanted a ground floor room we would need to downgrade to gold plus which we decided against.
Rooms/chalets
After the nightmare of registration I’m pleased to tell you there’s not much else bad to talk about so rant over and onto the Chalets.
On arrival to the room I was pretty impressed, the room was clean and tidy and all ready for our arrival, and relevant festival flyers were out on the table for our perusal. The rooms are a decent size for the 4 person chalet, there’s plenty of places to sit and chill out after a hard days head banging. The kitchen is of decent size also it includes all the amenities, sink (not to chunder over indulged quantities of booze into) oven, toaster and Microwave (only available to Very important Persons)
The Bathroom is also of decent size, I have had to get washed in a lot smaller places before, and besides the inconveniently placed paper towel dispenser next to the toilet everything has its own space. The shower heats up nicely however you do have to keep pressing a button to keep it going, I’m guessing to prevent drunken rockers from falling asleep and flooding the place. And again with VIP pass the bathroom is stocked daily with fresh towels having known this id of left my ACDC one at home.
The beds are rather comfy also and there is plenty of place to hang up your clothes and keep them away from that one crazy person who likes to fall into stuff at parties. The couch converts into a nice big double bed and it took me only a matter of moments to figure out how to unfold the bed without decapitating myself.
Food and Drink
Everyone’s favourite part food and drink, I'm pleased to tell you there is plenty of options available. Including a hot dog stand a café and also plenty of bars. If your a VIP you can get access to the VIP bar which offers discounted drinks as well as receiving 10 percent off at the regular bar areas, which are located conveniently close to each of the stages. There are 3 stages at the festival one of which is located in a pub so comes with its own friendly atmosphere. The café provides an excellent range of all day food stuffs so you can gorge yourself to Valhalla , there is also an on site shop with friendly staff ready to meet your every needs. Service at the Bars is well met and fast, so no frustrating waits at the bar.
Toilets
At most festivals you have to deal with the hygiene horror of portaloos, but at hard rock hell there is none of that dicey business. The toilets provided are maintained and kept clean regularly and also not as busy as you would think, throughout the entire weekend I only had to queue for the toilet once.
Seating
There is only one stage that provides open seating to all ticket holders at stage 2 and it is quite awkwardly placed at the sides of the venue which means that sometimes your view can be obscured by the huge speaker stacks at the side of the stage. On stage 3 (the largest of the stages) VIP's can get access to the seating area at the back which provides an excellent view of the stage , and also of the sound man’s set list.
Stages
As previously mentioned before there are 3 stages through the venue all of which are relatively close together so its only a quick dart to catch the end of a set of one band then onto another.
Stage 1 is located in the site's own pub so it comes with its own friendly pub like atmosphere. Stage 2 is located directly next to the pub and is large venue with a huge bar and plenty of places to stand, but as previously mentioned the seating is a little bit awkward. Stage 3 the largest of the stages is located in a huge main hall with plenty of seating for VIPs is located close to the bar and provides plenty of places to stand and even when the headlining act was playing it wasn’t all to rammed in with sweaty drunken rockers. Also in-between stages there is a metal market where you can pick up a tonne of merch, clothes and other rock n roll goods.
Conclusion
All in all I had an absolutely fantastic time at the event. There is a nice atmosphere and candour between everyone, its a great place to meet new people and make new friends. The venue has a lot on offer might I also mention an arcade area too, so if you don’t fancy taking out your frustrations by head banging there is always a horde of zombies to shoot. The Acts were phenomenal and included some classic bands mixed in with some awesome up and coming acts. Its just a shame that you need to book a year in advance to enjoy the VIP experience which I highly recommend to anyone wishing to give HRH a chance. If you love festivals but hate camping outdoors in the pouring rain then HRH is the Festival for you.
|
.jpg)
