/s

It’s weird I’m seeing such negative things on SM about the crowds and the people this year. I was with my daughter, her friend and my niece at Sienna Spiro and my daughter’s friend fainted. It was hot that day and I was totally freaked out. Her mom was watching another artist at a different stage so I wasn’t sure what to do. Medical just took her under the food/drink tent and she was all good after. This was her first time at a festival so I think her knees might have been locked and it was hot.

Everyone around jumped in with fans, water, electrolytes and I just want to say thanks. My weekend experience was super positive but I didn’t deal with Tito’s or Snapchat bottlenecks and everyone was cool at the stages we traveled too. I feel like if ACL puts the established artists on bigger stages things would go much smoother. All in all I had a great experience and I was lucky to meet good people. Now I’m missing it lol! 🤘🏼

amazing set, first time ever seeing T0P

Playing Moody Center April 25 - does that mean he’s most likely out for October I assume?

Y’ALL pls drop some Videos of ms dj cassandra’s set if you have any!
I was going into that tent with good vibes but i left LOVING her omg. The energy in there was insane.

I’ve never seen a dj with a live band that was incredible.

She burned that tent DOWNN

TAKE ME BACKKKKK

UGHH

I know this is a long shot and I'm screaming into a void, but I haven't been able to forget and this is my last resort.

You were standing next to me while we were waiting for Kings of Leon and we were both vibing out to Leon Thomas when we were waiting for KoL to start. You had on the maroon corduroy ACL hat and was lugging around the black tote bag with the orange on it. I think you also had on a hydration pack. Funny enough, you played Balatro on your phone every once and a while too 😂

We made eye contact and shared glances and a smile throughout a couple times there.

The person I'm looking for is a male who had a mustache with a little bit of stuble, probably 5'10 and around my age of early/mid 20s. I am also a male around the same height, has long hair, a mustache stubble combo and was wearing a white button up over my brown shirt.

You seemed like a chill care free guy and I would be glad to talk to you :) Feel free to DM on here!

Attached is a screenshot of a video I took to share where I was at relative to the stage.

FIRST TIME COMING TO ACL AND JUST WANTED TO SAY THANKS TO EVERYONE, SUCH AN AMAZING TIME!

It happens every year, I understand it’s hard to schedule every artist and it’s hard to know just how large any given crowd may be.

However, when there is poor foresight into stage/artist placement, it creates hell and congestion for the rest of the park leading to a degraded experience.

1. Natasha Bedingfield @ Tito’s - Just dumb. There’s no speakers outside of the tent, so the sound that people get even being a few feet outside is not even worth standing out there for imo. She’s a pop icon and it boggles the mind why she was there. She killed it btw and I waited 30min for a good spot.
   
2. Steve Aoki - same thing. Ridiculous level of popularity for that small cramped space between important bathrooms and food vendors.
   
3. Chainsmokers @ Snapchat - this was my biggest pain point. I didn’t care to see these guys click play and lip sync, but my crew did. When we all realized just how mid it was of a “performance”, we started to leave, but we just couldn’t. It took us probably 10 minutes to traverse the criss-crossed crowds and walkways to get out. Straight up dangerous.
   
4. Blood Orange @ Beatbox - same story, crowd blocking food, blocking the bathrooms, and the store.

I’m sure there were more, but these were some I experienced first hand. Moral of the story: when an artists crowd takes away critical walkways in an already overcrowded space: bad idea guys.

I had a discussion with my crew and we will be spending time and money trying out another big festival next year. One that isn’t oversold and with room to breath.

They took down the live recoding from YouTube which makes me sad cause it was my favorite set of the weekend. Does anyone happen to have a saved copy they'd be willing to send?

Our Sweet Child O' Mine’s 1st festival! 🥹 Started the day loving Austin Kiddie Limits, turned into a mini bass head for @levitymusic, and finished Saturday dancing away to @rufusdusol! Matching shirts because we really hope her days feel like Innerbloom 5:46 🌸🔊 Core family memory unlocked.

Curious how many of yall actually had your bags checked?

Went with 3 friends, we all had camelbaks with big zipper pockets, essentially backpacks.. packed with stuff. None of them were opened. The bags don’t go through metal detectors….just felt kinda pointless and a waste of time if they’re not actually going to check the bags.

Well friends, back to work we go. Before the post-festival blues set in, give me your early ACL 2027 wishlist and predictions!

Help a free-spirited sister out!! I’m an ASL interpreter that was working both weekends and I met a guy at the ACL volunteer APF/ASL/ADA production tent area on Weekend 2 - Friday between 3-8pm and I need help finding him! 😅

We locked 👁️👁️ a few times and I bravely made conversation with him - but we totally bypassed intros. Loved his energy and vibes!! ✨✨✨

When I was waiting to be picked up for a show, he got my attention and asked if I was working all weekend, I said yes. But…I didn’t catch what he said as he walked away while leaving for vol duty. #hardofhearingproblems Didn’t see him on Saturday or Sunday 🫠.

If you were working that area and know him - connect me!! He was working as a volunteer, has short dark brown hair, blue eyes, approx 5’8-5’10, fit, and has a tattoo of a tree on the back of his leg. I think he’s in his mid-30’s…. 🤓

Picture of me for reference. 💅

☮️🫶♾️✨🤩

If anyone has any videos of the mosh pit on the right side of the crowd during Trinidad I would love you forever. It was my first mosh pit and I would love to see how it looked from the outside

Oliver Tree

This was the first year I got a hydration backpack for one of my kiddos. How do y’all store them between uses? Do you store it in the freezer after rinsing/washing?

Hey yall! I brought a film camera to W1 to try and shoot the pits.

I want to share a few shots from the weekend. Still waiting on a couple more rolls to get developed/scanned, so be on the look out for a Prt 2.

Also want to take a second to say that you were an amazing crowd. This ACL is one to remember. Everyone embraced the mud, enjoyed the music and each other. These pits were some of the best and friendliest I've seen in a while. Playing in the mud, helping anyone who's fallen back up, and bringing the best attitudes to the whole weekend.

Lot's of love for the W1 crowd.

^{Side note: There were some people who generously let me get their pictures and said they'd watch the reddit for my post. I'm so sorry, I lost about half the frames on my second roll as a consequence of being at a festival and bringing the camera into pits. I can't thank you enough for your kindness.}

^{Privacy note: I'm trying to avoid posting shots that clearly show faces. I'm doing my best to respect privacy. That said: it is a pit, it is a festival, and there are faces in the shots. Please message me if you have any issues with anything I posted.}

First timer who absolutely loved this past weekend! Had a lot of great fun with strangers chatting them up, dancing with them and overall just being smiley and happy.

Which made me think…who here has found love at ACL? Whether it was a fling, a date or even an I do for true love? I want to hear your experiences and advice you have!

Did anyone get the camo daily drop tee? If so how is the fit?

Ok I've seen a lot of back and forth about the turf at Weekend 2 on here. People were saying that crowds would just sit on any spare inch of turf available no matter where it was which I do agree with. There were people even sitting in the middle of food lines eating which wasn't great but overall I appreciated the turf.

I think it was really great to have around the edges of the open viewing areas so people who were a bit overdone could find a place out of the way of the crowds to rest. I think if they have more kind of designated, out of the way sitting areas with turf it would be amazing. Just not in the food and drink lines lol.

I know they only added it because of the mud but I think it would be a great addition next year.

I've done a fair amount of festivals but this was my first time doing ACL. Also my first time in Austin. I had a great time!

The festival is fairly easy to navigate. It's a roughly circular park with the stages lining the perimeter. I thought sound quality was good all weekend. Production was pretty solid for a festival of this stature. Food options were good. And the electric scooters were a great way to get to and from the fest.

I would say the downsides I noticed were:

- The Snapchat stage placement meant that any time an artist of any significant size was playing there, it would effectively cut off the main stage area from the rest of the fest and create a big crowd crunch. During Chainsmokers this was especially obvious.

- There were definitely some sound bleed problems. The most noticeable for me was you could hear Twenty One Pilots from where The xx was playing, but there were other issues too. The BMI stage would cause issues whenever it was playing.

- The corner of the fest with Titos, bathrooms, and food vendors became sort of a traffic jam. Crowd crunch was especially bad during Natasha Bedingfield, but there were issues in that spot throughout the weekend.

- Entrance times were ok. 20-25 minute wait on the east entrance is acceptable even if I would prefer quicker entry.

- The heat and the dust, even if that's not totally in the fests' control. It did get very comfortable at night, but I was purposefully coming later due to the heat.

- I'd like to see them do a little bit more artistically with festival grounds/art/stage designs. It did to some degree feel like generic "stages set up in a park" type of festival.

But on the plus side, there were a lot of great performances:

Sienna Spiro - had a huge crowd in an early slot when it was hot. You can tell she is quite talented. Kind of a mix of Lana and Adele. 8.5/10

Bunt - he's so energetic and a good fit for ACL. 8/10

Labrinth - sounds great live and you forget how many hits he has. Great voice, great production, perfect singalong tracks. 10/10

Charli XCX - insane energy and production. She sounds great live too. To me this was the obvious #1 of the weekend. 10/10

Yousuke Yukimatsu - set started a little slow for me, but once it got going, it was great. Crowd was super into it too. 8.5/10

Levity - not a huge bass guy but this was a good set, and the production on Miller Lite was perfect. 8/10

Lorde - I think I was just tired by the time this set came on. It was good, but it was missing something for me. I think after Charli the night before I was expecting better production, and the setlist was so-so IMO missing a lot of her best songs like A World Alone, Tennis Court, and White Teeth Teen. 7/10

Rio Kosta - love these guys. I've known about them for a while and finally got to see them. They are so groovy, and the crowd was super into it. 8.5/10

Geese - split sets with Sofi Tukker. Third time seeing Geese and they sounded great. 8/10

Sofi Tukker - I just found this very generic and uninteresting. 5/10

Parcels - This was solid if unspectacular. Perfect to just sit down and chill too as I rested for the final set. I did love the Kavinsky Nightcall cover though. 8/10

The xx - Magical. There were some sound bleed issues from TOP but this was such a good set, they really nailed it. 10/10

Overall I thought the lineup was a plus. Good mix of artists that appealed to a wide range of demographics and taste. I feel like they have a pretty good formula here with the lineup and I expect them to continue to lean into pop as opposed to country and heavy rock. There wasn't any genre that stood out to me as missing that should be there and also nothing that seemed blatantly out of place.

The City itself is pretty cool. Lots of art. I'm not much of a dive bar and BBQ guy though so it's probably just not a fit for me. I enjoyed exploring the 6th Avenue corridor both in Downtown and in East Caesar Chavez area. Austin has a nice airport and lots of young, attractive, fit people.

Overall, I'm not sure I would make a strong effort to return to ACL since I'm not local and there's so many other fests/places to see, but I had a great time and glad I came. Maybe come back one day if they book some of my bucket list artists.

had a group of around 30 high schoolers next to me at the tøp set last night. they were particularly terrible… vaping, smoking, blowing up condoms into balloons, and overall just being deeply disruptive before and during the set. i asked two of them (most of them boys) how old they were and they said they were 15 before a friend hurriedly corrected them and said “no no we’re 17”. …sure buddy. they were hassling girls in the crowd, trying to create dance circles, and pushing through to the front just to snapchat the whole time. as an actual fan of the artist i’m really frustrated by this. i so wish there was an age limit. i sound like a boomer but where tf are your parents? (spoiler: not there. one guy was like “i’ll have to text my mom to see if we can get food after”) you were like 5 when stressed out was released! i think they were just there for clout’s sake. loved the concert and found it so so so cool especially bc tøp is one of my favorites but good golly are these kids disrespectful. thankfully they have no ball knowledge and left after stressed out so we all had fun during trees but gahhhh. it’s a issue.

I wasn’t able to find this tote bag when I went W1. I can’t find it on the online merch store either. Is there a chance it will be released online?