After another badly organised download festival this year we are looking at going to Hellfest in french France next year
anyone been?

Ta

How about Bloodstock in the UK instead, my other half has just got back and cant sing the praises enough of how well it was organised and how good the facilities were.

Ta yes thats a thought as well

A friend of mine actually played at Hellfest this year. According to him there is no comparison, Hellfest is better than anything over here by a long margin.

I have heard that it also sells out pretty quickly though

ok thanks
it looks impressive thats for sure, would like to know who’s playing before shelling out !
tickets aren’t on sale yet anyway

Not sure, quite a few of the European Festivals waz from a great height on the British efforts. Although most of the people I know attend the festivals where half the battle is working out the band name from the overly complicated spiky logo.

Got good reports about this:

HOMEPAGE

+1 on the praise for Bloodstock too, everyone I know who went only had good things to say.

Sweden Rocks always looks brilliant and I keep meaning to look into Tuska in Helsinki:

http://www.tuska-festival.fi/

+another for bloodstock. Much smaller scale (10kish compared to 70k) but very friendly.

Tho Euro festivals are a completely different animal.
we’ve been up to Wacken a couple of times in ’13 and ’15 – both years was a sell out well in advance, similar sort of size to download with 75-78k people there.

big difference is you camp with your car, you can arrive the monday before the festival starts (festival starts on Thursday) so arrival is more spread out.. less queues for the wristband exchange. Beer is fairly reasonable on site… 3euros for small beer. 7euros for a litre stein. and 3.50euro for MET (mead)(you pay a deposit for a the tough plastic cup or stein but they are all wacken branded so make a nice souvenir, so you dont mind losing the euro deposit.) food is also reasonable.. no ‘gourmet burger’ ‘gourmet noodles’ chains like the UK festivals.

Biggest thing tho is the local village embraces the festival – a huge part of the wacken experience is leaving the festival grounds and wondering down to hte village, or getting the shuttle bus to the local open air pool. each time we have been villages have set up bars in their front garden… the garden across from the pedestrian entrance/exit had a huge bar and selling beer for 1euro for 500ml bottles. the local kids will cart you and your shopping in their pedal go-kart trailers from the supermarket to the festival entrance for a small fee.

Also been over for Rockavaria at Munich’s olympic park this year.

once you’ve been to a euro festival, you wont want to go back to Download

Cheers Guys!

half the battle is working out the band name from the overly complicated spiky logo.

Looking at the websites i see what you mean!