Nominated as the Best Music Event by the International Dance Music Awards for 2012, 2013 and 2014, how could one not want to attend?
For all you EDM fans, Tomorrowland is the place to be to get that full-on experience that you having been searching at other DJ shows or festivals! For all you non-EDM fans who love dancing, I recommend you download a range of podcasts from Tiesto to Afrojack to Aboveandbeyond, slip in your earplugs, figure out what type of music gets you dancing and get excited, as this festival is a once in a lifetime event that cannot be missed. This is by far, the most well organized event I have ever been to; Trinidad Carnival ought to take some tips. The second you walk in, you can appreciate the time, cost and effort these event organizers have put into this phenomenal festival.
2014 was the 10 year anniversary of the event in Belgium so of course the founders wanted nothing less than two intense weekends back to back with the most famous and powerful DJs. I will take you through the process of how I got tickets, where I stayed and my overall amazing experience at the festival in Boom, Belgium in July 2014. Note: There will also be another Tomorrowland in Brasil from May 1st to 3rd in 2015 (tickets come out this weekend!) and TomorrowWorld in Altanta at the end of September.
Tickets
Start your journey to Tomorrowland by securing some of these hot tickets. I will not lie, it is insanely difficult to get tickets but once you do, please do not let them go! But say if you had any extra, you can always swing some by me!
Tickets for Tomorrowland in Belgium usually come out during the month of February so check out their website at http://www.tomorrowland.com/en/home and pre-register for tickets. You can buy either day ticket passes, tickets for the whole weekend, tickets which include camping packages in Dreamville or even Global Journey packages that assist you in getting from a city nearby the festival to Boom. I went through the process the legit way with my sister however unfortunately I was unable to snag any of these hot tickets (as they literally sell out in minutes), so I had to go through the sketchy root and buy some very expensive (three times the price) through a website called Viagogo. I got my tickets (for the Saturday on Weekend 2) by the month of May, printed them off and posted them to Instagram to make all my friends jealous! If you are lucky enough to get the tickets through the Tomorrowland website, you will be sent your Tomorrowland ticket and bracelet by June.
Getting there & Accommodation
If it is your first time heading to Europe, you might as well just do a Eurotrip?
Well I put my organisation skills to the test and planned a full fledged 3 week Eurotrip with a pitstop in Tomorrowland and it was well worth it! You can either fly in to Brussels (on one of those awesome Tomorrowland jets from Brussel Airlines) or take the train to Boom or Antwerp; there are free Tomorrowland shuttles from Antwerp to Boom. I stayed at an Airbnb place in Antwerp and easily got to and from the Festival however I highly recommend staying in a hotel in Boom or at the campsite as the travel back at 1am, took about 2 hours with the amount of non-coherent bodies leaving the festival all at once.
The Event
Welcome to DisneyWorld for Adults (as my partner in dance, my sister, dubbed the infamous festival to be). It starts at noon and goes until your feet can move no more, which is more or less around 1am. You walk through the “lineless” entrance and into the most well decorated and magical place with colourful fairytale characters and endless bars and food places. Make sure and buy some Tomorrowland coins (at the machines which take as much cash or plastic you are willing to give). Note – drinks are a bit pricey so monitor what you buy as you can not get back money on any of your coins. Discover the lakes, bridges, flags from all over the worls, balloons and 12 crazy stages, which all come together to create a feeling of excitement and pure happiness that I really have not felt since I was a child wondering around DisneyWorld.
Take your time walking around and stop off for a little dance session at each of the stages and when you are ready for it, make your way to the Mainstage! The Mainstage has a huge dancefloor accompanied by an enormous grass area to relax those poor dancing feet and take in the surroundings (it is a long day). However that day goes by faster than you can imagine. By night, the stages are light up with fireworks synced to the killer drops of the track with soap bubbles and smartphone lights covering the nightsky. Find your spot, which I advise to be as close to the stage as possible and enjoy the sweet sound of EDM!!
Download the App! The Tomorrowland App enables one to view the list of artists, stages, timetable and map. This is especially essential when you are running around the who knows how many squarefoot grounds, trying to locate that one DJ, you flew thousands of miles just to snapchat and of course listen to! I was lucky enough to see Firebeatz, Laidback luke, Martin Solveig, Above and beyound, Alesso, Hardwell and Tiesto but the best, of course at 12:30am was Tiesto and Hardwell. It was an unbelievable sight! Those two DJs together was pure magic!
EDM festivals have connotation of young and wild people with very little clothing, dancing quite oddly and on hardcore drugs! These connotations are to say the least absolutely true, but I honestly believe that one can have an amazing experience no matter what you are wearing, what you are taking and who you are with. Everyone at the Festival is unbelievably friendly, maybe for a reason I shall not say, but I have never meet some many people or been apart of so many photographs in 24 hours!
To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about an event with over 400,000 people attending but the ambiance, music and magical moments takes celebrating life to a whole new level! Experience the Madness of Tomorrowland!
People of Tomorrowland
Grab your friends, Buy some tickets and good dancing shoes, Book your flights to either Brazil or Belgium and Unlock the happiness at this once in a lifetime Global Music Festival!
*please note many of these photographs are taken from the Tomorrowland website as my little iPhone was unable to capture the true moments that would inveigle one to attend.