Attendees and social media users have dubbed Miami’s Ultra Music Festival #FyreFestival2 after it experienced a logistical meltdown on Friday night.
After the last show ended around 2 a.m., more than 50,000 concertgoers waited hours for shuttle buses that would take them from the island of Virginia Key to Miami. That or walking almost three miles back to the mainland to find transportation were the only choices. This was the first year the festival had taken place at Virginia Key.
Ultra had 200 buses readied to take people to three hubs in Miami. Long lines began forming at the buses after 1 a.m., with attendees complaining about proper organization of the lines and festival staffers’ inability to direct people. And as concertgoers began pouring out of the festival grounds, a tree even caught on fire. The cause is still unknown.
Many concertgoers abandoned the shuttles and opted to walk across the Rickenbacker Causeway to Miami. Uber and Lyft had been barred from picking people up on Virginia Key.
The mishap was a fraction of the chaos the Fyre Festival is known for. The festival was such a disaster that it became the subject of documentaries on Netflix and Hulu. While the Netflix doc gives a better insight into the failure's planning, the Hulu doc focused on 28-year-old festival creator Billy McFarland, talks with festivalgoers, and artists who were slated to perform. The festival ultimately led McFarland to a six-year jail sentence for wire fraud.
Read some of the best reactions to Ultra's operational nightmare below.
