PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY, Va. – Thousands of Blue Ridge Rock Festival goers are vowing to not return after calling the event complete chaos.
Enjoying the VIP lounge, Justin, came from Washington D.C. and is one of the tens of thousands of festival-goers who flocked to the Blue Ridge Rock Festival.
“There’s so many different bands,” he said. “So many different types of people and groups of people coming together. It’s perfect.”
But not everyone agrees.
Nearly 4,000 people are airing out their frustrations with the festival on a Facebook group created Thursday.
The camping lot posed a problem for some people like Vince Rice.
“A lot of people don’t know you are in this colored lot, you are in that colored lot,” he said. “You figure it out.”
Others say the traffic congestion was the worst part.
“Ooh man, trying to get in here was chaos a little bit,” Shawn Stevenson Sr. said. “Probably should have came a little earlier. But it was pretty bad.”
“It was just cars piled on cars,” J.T. Turner said. “A lot of wait hours. You heard people saying they waited for six hours, four hours. But overall, as the day kept going by it got better.”
At the intersection near the entrance of the festival is C & C Automotive caught up in the mess.
The owner, Chris Shively said he and his family are sleeping inside the business because of the heavy traffic.
“For some of the homeowners and business owners that can’t get in and out of work,” he said. “They are losing money. Me, I still got my guys on payroll in there because they got families to take care of. They need to compensate us locals because they are making the big bucks.”
Some festival-goers said there was limited ADA parking accessibility on Thursday.
In a Facebook post on Friday, the festival addressed this issue and said they added extra golf cart shuttles to help bring people to the main campground.
The post continues to say they apologize for the confusion and are working to improve the experience.
We called the organizer of the Blue Ridge Rock Festival but did not receive a response.
However, the public relations manager for Pittsylvania County tells us the “promoter is working closely with county staff to ensure that the transportation and parking difficulties are alleviated.”